Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 43-minute commentary, Ven Jampa Gendun works through Tsongkhapa’s three principal aspects of the path — specifically the determination to be free — using psychological rather than traditional religious language: saṃsāra recast as “neurotic compulsive patterns,” renunciation as refusing “existential flight.” He grounds the session in taking refuge, then introduces the four reversals, spending most of the time on the second: awareness of death. A Katherine Mansfield story — a grandmother and granddaughter tickling each other into forgetting they had been talking about dying — anchors his argument that our avoidance of death is itself a spiritual obstacle. He draws on Pabongka Rinpoche’s six benefits of keeping death in mind and closes by sketching the nine-round death meditation. Pitched at practitioners already familiar with Lamrim who will find its blend of existential framing and classical Tibetan method unusually direct.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 03 3 PA 1990 05 11.mp3
UUID: 461acd5d-e0ee-4e5f-b80e-372c7d7263ac
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: Three Principal Aspects of the Path 1988-1990 (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 1990-05-11
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 43.5 minutes
Words: ~5,145
Using the techniques of counting, counting the breaths and noting mentally, noting whatever your mind is involved in from moment to moment to moment, and the development of the factors of mindfulness and awareness. So if you take a comfortable, dignified posture, Set some kind of a direction. Adjust your motivation. For myself, I know when we talk about cyclic existence, and I speak of it in terms of these neurotic compulsive patterns which govern our lives, To a large extent, our lives are based upon these patterns of hopes and fears, fears of dependencies, neurotic needs. And they don’t allow us any freedom.
There’s a certain anxiety which permeates our life, which is like an undercurrent of everything that we do. Most take what is might be termed existential flight, an unwillingness to confront the issue of one’s, dissatisfactory eco based existence, living within these confines of these compulsive patterns over which one has no control, and become absorbed in various particulars, particular people, particular situations, material things, whatever, some way to flee from confronting the issue of taking responsibility. For myself, my own fear is that, unless I confront and begin to work through these patterns, I don’t see a prospect for any lasting satisfaction, fulfillment, anything which is going to take me beyond my feelings of alienation, inauthenticity, aloneness, isolation. All of these feelings which are, to a lesser or greater extent, almost constantly there unless I distract myself by one means or another. And so I think it becomes imperative that we spend part of our time basing our existence on something outside of these patterns, something beyond our own egos, you might say.
That we spend part of our time, part of our effort, direct part of our energy toward dissolving these patterns and trying to regain a wholeness or integration of something toward unconditioned existence, which is not conditioned by all of these hopes and fears of our patterned modes of existence. And this becomes a direction in our lives. The inner direction and the inner goal of our life becomes Buddha, one’s own Buddhahood. And we do this by means of the Sangha, by means of the Dharma, and the actual realizations, the step by step methods of growth, the realizations, the becoming, the going beyond these patterned modes of existence. And this is all done in the social context of a spiritual community, the way of relating with the world.
And it becomes a real workable way of solving the problems of ordinary ego based existence, rather than continually fleeing and becoming absorbed in particulars, which can at best only be temporary, and at best only offer some kind of partial relief. So if you’re going for refuge, taking the direction in Buddhadharma and Sangha is a way You know, the word existential means that one It’s a commitment of one’s entire being. It’s not an emotional upheaval in one’s life, that one gets very emotional and prays to be saved. It’s not simply an intellectual exercise, or it’s simply a matter of will. But it’s a commitment of centering your life around the principles of growth, seeing the absolute necessity to devote part of your life, part of your energy around going beyond these patterned modes of existence.
One has to. It is as if what is it? I think Krishnamurti said, for an intelligent person, there’s no choice. I think Bob Ramsay said, There’s nothing more for an intelligent person to do with their life. Once you begin to confront issues of anxiety, isolation and fear, dissatisfaction, that nothing within the ego based states of existence can alleviate.
So 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 any other perfections, may I attain Buddhahood for the sake of all beings. To the Buddha, the Dharma, the Sangha, 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 We’re discussing Tsongkhapa’s text, three principal aspects of the path.
Developing the determination to be free, opening our hearts to others, and seeing deeply into the nature of reality. Three principal aspects of the path. This is the actual refuge. This is what actually solves our problems. We’re looking at the first of these three, the determination to be free, and the way we generate this path.
A path is a consciousness. The way we make use of these teachings as a means to become our own refuge, to become Buddha, to become a happy, healthy, loving, sane human being. That is to say, the way we can solve our problems is by becoming in a methodical manner, developing these step by step realizations as a means, a very practical and realistic means, to solve our problems of ego based existence, some way to transcend these pattern modes of existence. But first, we have to develop the determination to go beyond all pattern modes of existence. We have to develop determination to go beyond our own egos.
And so, it’s not going to come naturally. It’s a matter of cultivation again and again, gaining more and more insight, mixing, integrating. Buddha is simply pointing to the realities of the situation. And it is up to us to try to identify that for ourselves, to recognize what is being pointed at. We should never mistake the finger for the moon.
We have to look to where it’s what is being pointed at and to to make use of these teachings, but see how they are operating with our own everyday life. They are not something other. They are not talking about something other than what is happening to us, our experience. It’s talking about a human being’s experience, the average ordinary human being’s experience. Not particularly a Buddhist, not particularly an easterner or a westerner, but what it means to be an ordinary human being.
You know, that no one told us about these things. They didn’t teach us in secondary, primary grades, or tertiary in college. They didn’t tell us what life was like. So we perhaps have been making mistakes somewhere along the line, feeling that somehow I was uniquely screwed up. But it’s not our fault in particular.
It’s a universal problem. It’s an existential problem. We all have our particular historical problems, and these have to be solved to a lesser or greater degree. But there’s problems which are ahistorical. Simply by being having ego, we are confronted with specific types of dissatisfaction.
We’ll talk about this when we come to the fact that all ego based modes of existence, states of existence, dissatisfactory. We’re working up to that. But we have to develop this energy, this determination. I have to change. I have to grow.
I have to go beyond this pattern mode of existence. I really have to work at it. To think that following a spiritual path is somehow a skillful avoidance of problems is a great mistake. To the contrary, it’s confronting our problems. And it takes a lot of courage and a lot of determination to do that and to work through them, to take that responsibility, and not to give this power that you have to make choices over to someone else, which we’re constantly doing, to forego making your own decisions, and to flee from the possibility of making mistakes, to having to carry the burden of one’s own destiny, to give over that power to other people, to our society, to whoever.
So it’s a very radical different approach to perhaps the way we’ve we’ve been leading our life up till now. So it takes a tremendous determination, tremendous courage. It takes a sense of, as I mentioned, it’s as if the dissatisfactoriness of our present way of being forces us to change. But also in a positive sense, there’s a light, what he said, the inarticulate whisperings of our own hearts drawing us on. So it’s a it’s a a combination, I think, of the push of suffering and the drawing of freedom, a taste of the possibility of liberation, which helps us to walk the path, to travel this, make this journey.
We begin the journey by developing determination to be free, by means of what is commonly termed the four reversals. Becoming aware of our potential and appreciating the chance that we have to actualize our potential. The certainty of death, the uncertainty of the time of death, and that anything else than our own mental development will be of no benefit at the moment of our death. That’s the second reversal. Third reversal is the law of cause and effect, karma.
What types of patterns are we laying down within our mind? In dependence upon those particular patterns, what can we expect in future states of existence, both within this life and possible future lives? That’s the third. And fourthly, the dissatisfactory nature of all ego based states of existence, That there’s nothing worth becoming or having within the realm of ego, within the realm of these neurotic compulsive patterns which govern our lives. Though they appear attractive, they’re simply very much like an illusion.
They never bring the satisfaction that we expect of them. And we have to constantly be going on and on and trying to gain satisfaction, trying to achieve that permanent bliss which saṃsāra holds out to us, that promise. Keep trying. Therefore, we never try to transcend it. We never try to go beyond it.
These are the ways that we can develop this determination to be free the foundation for the journey. Then we go on to open our hearts to others and see deeply into the nature of reality. Tsongkhapa, the author of the text, Three Principal Aspects of the Path, he devised these four reversals, that is, the way of developing the determination to be free, into two parts. The first part is the way of reversing emphasis on the appearance of this life by means of the first two reversals. Appreciating our potential and our chance to actualize it, and awareness of death is the way we can begin to reverse our emphasis on the appearance of this life.
We have to go on to reverse the emphasis on the appearance of future lives. We do this by means of the latter two of these four reversals: the law of cause and effect, and the dissatisfactory quality of any state bounded by ego. You know, we’re working through those, working through these four reversals. Reversing emphasis on life. What does that mean?
Buddhism is very pragmatic. It has no absolutes. It’s not moralistic in the sense that we should be some way or another. We want to be happy. That’s our experience as human beings, and we should be happy.
When we say to reverse emphasis on the appearance of this life, when we say to give up this life, it doesn’t mean that we are to give up our pleasure, to seeking happiness. Then what does it mean? What does it mean to reverse the appearances, the emphasis on this life? It means to deemphasize our attachment to the eight principal preoccupations of ego oriented existence. We have eight principal preoccupations.
And it’s saying to deemphasize is to begin to lessen your attachment to these preoccupations. These eight preoccupations, principal preoccupations, the way our gross expression of our ego. We’re trying to ultimately transcend our ego, to transcend these patterns. What are the grosser manifestations of these patterns in our everyday life? They’re saying there are eight principal preoccupations, eight principal gross coarse expressions.
And if we’re going to work toward transcending, we have to begin somewhere. Hope for pleasure, fear of pain. These govern our lives. We allow ego to set our priority. Hope for pleasure, fear of pain, hope for gain, fear of loss.
Hope for praise, fear of blame. Hope for fame, fear of infamy. And there’s no freedom in that. There’s no possibility of choice. There’s no wisdom in operating in such a type of life that’s conditioned by fear and hope.
That’s what I was saying. Your whole mentality, attitude is bound up in pleasure orientated behavior, then you’re not going to take up the difficult task of transformation because you may have to voluntarily take on some suffering. Sometimes it’s not easy, for example, to impose some kind of wholesome discipline on oneself, a sitting meditation practice, for example. And if you were of such a mentality that you would never entertain the idea of doing something which didn’t bring you immediate pleasure, there would be no possibility of ever going beyond your own ego. There would be no freedom.
There would be no possibility for wisdom to begin to operate in your life, to begin to reorientate your priorities from pleasure pain principle to the principle of freedom as opposed to what? Slavery. To to make those consistent choices toward freedom, toward wholeness, toward love. Reversing these attachments to these eight principle preoccupations of ego-orientated existence, we’re beginning in a real way to lessen the force of the priorities set by ego in our life, to lessen the force of having our life be governed by fear and hope, that we are able to exercise our wisdom, and we have choice, and we direct ourselves toward real freedom and our ultimate happiness, which isn’t bound up in illusory pleasure. Then, on that basis, beginning to reverse emphasis on the appearance of future lives.
But again, this simply means to deemphasize, to lessen the attachment to any ego based state of existence. No matter how attractive it might appear, it’s not worth it. It’s not freedom. It’s, at best, temporarily. It’s dissatisfactory.
We’ll talk about that when we discuss the dissatisfactory quality or nature of any state bounded by ego in terms of the three marks of existence. The suffering of dissatisfaction, suffering of change, and the suffering of conditionality. We’ve discussed the first of these four reversals. We have the potential in terms of our intrinsic wakefulness, in terms of the natural purity of our mind, our own basic goodness, our Buddha nature. That’s the basis of transformation.
This is our potential to become a happy, healthy, loving, sane human being. This is not something other than an extension of who we are now. It’s not something otherworldly. It’s not something qualitatively different than who we are at present. It is simply an extension of who we are at present, that we all have this basic goodness, that we all have this intrinsic wakefulness.
That we all have the natural purity of our mind. That we are not our problems. That we are not our patterns. We can transcend those. We can solve those.
And we talked about that we have all of the external and internal conditions to actualize our potential, that there’s nothing lacking. Not something that we’re missing, that we feel kind of a vague notion, waiting for something. That there’s something more that is needed. But this chance is not going to last forever, which brings us to the second reversal, which we’re going to discuss tonight. It’s definite that we’re going to die.
And we have the basis of transformation. We have the potential. We have all the external and internal conditions to actualize, to manifest, to make actual our potential to solve our problems once and for all in a real realistic way, practical way. But this opportunity, this chance, simply isn’t going to be there all the time. It’s a given that we’re going to die.
And Tsongkhapa speaks of in the verse where he says, Leisure and fortune are difficult to find, and life has no duration. Life has no duration. So he’s talking about death. There was a Zen student who went to his teacher, and we were going to talk about death. A Zen student went to his teacher and he said, Master, how do I prepare for death?
The teacher said, Learn to live. The student said, How shall I learn to live? And he said, Prepare yourself for death. Recently, I heard a There was an interview of a woman who was terminally ill. She was dying.
And she was asked what she regretted most in her life. And she answered that, I had never thought about death until now. Death is something that we’d rather not confront, that we’d rather not think about. It’s something which is unknown and feared. And this fear, fear is fundamentally a state of unawareness supported by irrational beliefs.
So, you know, all of the undercurrent of anxiety, which I was talking about, which permeates our life, is based upon our mistaken core assumptions, some wrong beliefs that we hold, wrong ideas. And we’re probably not aware of these ideas, these mistaken assumptions, but still they affect our behavior. They’re still there. They rule our life. You know, we have many grandiose ideas about ourselves.
For example, I am more special than anyone else. You may not admit that you have that idea, but it’s probably there somewhere, deep down inside of you. Conditions in life should be such that I get what I want when I want it and never get what I don’t want. Some of our grandiose ideas concerning death, our beliefs concerning death, I shouldn’t have to die. I must have a one hundred percent guarantee that I’m not going to die tomorrow.
I should be able to control things so I don’t have to die. Death shouldn’t be this way. It shouldn’t be this way for me or my loved ones. And I’m not going to let it happen because it’s so unfair and it’s terribly sad, and it makes me feel lonely and fearful and sad. On our way to developing awareness of death, we have to begin to challenge these grandiose ideas that we have concerning death and about ourselves.
We have to ask ourselves, What’s so special about me? That somehow the universe is going to mete out special treatment for me. Death is very unfortunate, and terribly sad, but it’s normal. All of our irrational beliefs concerning death, they go unnoticed, unnoticed because we aren’t aware of them. We aren’t aware of them basically because we’re cowards.
We want to forget death. We have to admit perhaps we’re going to have to die. But we try to put a veil between ourselves in that impending time of our own death. Yes, I’m going to die, but it’s not going to be any time too soon. Sometime in the very, very far distant future.
And we try to hide the actuality of our death behind these veils of a vague and distant future and never after to feel the impending death, which is going to meet us all, which is quite normal. And now, in the face of death, alone we are. That we have to die alone. Shakespeare. Ah, but to die and go we not know where, to lie in the cold obstruction and to rot, this sensible warm motion to become a needed clod and the delighted spirit to bathe in fiery floods or to reside in thrilling regions of thick ribbed ice, to be imprisoned in the viewless winds and blown with restless violence around the pendant world.
We die, but we where we don’t know where. We simply don’t know. We have a fear. We’re going to lose everything that we’ve known, that we’ve loved, that we valued. All our possessions, all our achievements, everything that we measure ourselves by, everything that we base our identity upon is going to be lost, going to be gone someday.
Everything that we base the conception about who we are upon, what we are, and even the fact if we are, it’s all going to be gone. We all have to separate it from it someday. You know, the essence of cowardice is not to limit one’s fears. Each of us here has some dread about their death, some anxiety about death. We would like to pretend it just doesn’t exist.
We would like to turn the channel to something else, something perhaps more pleasant. Let’s not talk about it. There’s passage from a story by Katherine Mansfield about what we might mean by let’s not talk about it. In this little passage, it’s very short, there’s a grandmother who’s talking to her daughter. The daughter’s name is Kessia.
So the grandchild asked the grandmother, Does everybody have to die? And the grandmother answered, Everybody. Me, Cassia, sounded fearfully incredulous. Someday, my darling. But, Grandma, Kessia waved her left leg and waggled her toes.
They felt sandy. What if I just won’t? The old woman sighed again and drew a long thread from the ball. We’re not asked, Kessia, she said, sadly. It happens to all of us sooner or later.
Kessia lay still thinking this over. She didn’t want to die. It meant she would have to leave here. Leave everywhere. Forever.
Leave. Leave her grandma. She rolled over quickly. Grandma, she said in a startled voice, but my pet. You’re not to die.
Cassia was very decided. Ah, Cassia, her grandmother looked up and smiled and shook her head. Don’t let us talk about it. But you’re not to. You couldn’t leave me.
You couldn’t not be there. This was awful. Promise me you won’t ever do it, grandma, pleaded Kessia. The old woman went on knitting. Promise me.
Say never. But still, grandma was silent. Kessia rolled over off the bed. She couldn’t bear it any longer. And lightly she tugged on her grandma’s knees, clasped her hands around the old woman’s throat, and began kissing her under the chin, behind the ear, and blowing down her neck.
Say never, say never, say never, she gasped between the kisses, and then she began very softly and lightly to tickle her grandma. Kessia, the old woman dropped her knitting. She swung back in her rocker. She began to tickle Kessia. Say never, say never, say never, gurgled Kessia, while they lay there laughing in each other’s arms.
Come, that’s enough, my squirrel. That’s enough, my wild pony, said old Mrs. Fairfield, setting her cap straight, picking up, pick up my knitting. Both of them had forgotten what the never was about. We’d rather not talk about it.
We’d rather distract ourselves from it. But the significance of talking about death and becoming aware of death is not just simply to become aware of our fears about death, surrounding death. Not simply a way of, not merely to overcome these fears that we have about death.. The significance of talking about death, about contemplating death, is to appreciate life and to ensure that we don’t waste our life. You know, the people who, you know perhaps it’s been somewhat judgmental, I don’t know, but those who lead a life of a living death, banalities, vanities, emptiness, inauthenticity, meaninglessness, purposelessness, lives which are simply a series of hollow events, one following another.
You know, these things that most people for which most people passes for life. There was a Tibetan teacher who was traveling through France with his attendant, with his companion, and they were driving in a car past all of the extensive cemeteries of the World War Two dead. And these cemeteries, are rows upon rows upon rows upon rows of nice, neat crosses, well manicured lawns, flowers, shrubbery. Very beautiful scene. And the the companion of the Tibetan teacher commented to the teacher.
He said, you know, in the west, they have such beautiful places to put the corpses after their death. And the Tibetan teacher said, but they have even more beautiful places to put the corpses before they die. You know, for to those who you know, if you’re willing to look at death, you know, squarely while there’s still life flowing in our veins, there’s strange paradox comes true. That to live gracefully and to die gracefully are one and the same thing. And to accept death is to appreciate your life.
And to always keep death before our mind’s eye is to always remember the essential value of life. What is important to me? What is important in my life as a unique self actualizing individual? Not what I’ve been told is valuable, not what I think should be valuable, but what by my own experience is valuable. That’s all you have is your life.
In the face of death, it is all that you have. And why live the life of someone else? To face death is to take control of our fear of death, and thereby to take control of our life, to take responsibility for your happiness, your experience of the way you’re leading your life. No one else can die for you. Therefore, no one else can live for you, no matter who it might be.
The Buddha said that among all the remembrances, that is a recollection of mindfulness, the mindfulness of death is the greatest of all. What we’re interested primarily is not death, but life. In a text by a twentieth century master, Pabongka Rinpoche, he talks about the six benefits of remembering death and the six detriments of not remembering death. In his masterwork, Liberation in the Palm of Your Hand, Pabongka Rinpoche lists six benefits of keeping your mind on death. Your practice becomes really pure.
It gains power. The thought helps you to start practice. They help you to strive hard during your practice. They help you to bring your practice to a successful conclusion. And in the hour of death, you will go with satisfaction, for you know that you have spent your life meaningfully.
Then he goes on, The six problems or the six detriments if we don’t remember death. The Rinpoche also lists six problems that come from not keeping your mind on death. You neglect your religious life and spend all your days in thoughts of what to eat or what to wear. This life’s distractions. You consider death occasionally, but always think it will come later and delay your practice.
Or you do practice, but for the wrong reason, with hopes of reputation. You practice, but with no enthusiasm and drop it after a while. You get deeper into this life, your attitudes get worse, and life begins to hurt you. At death, you naturally feel intense regret, for you have wasted all your efforts on this present life. As an actual means, an actual means of practice, to gain awareness of death, to break through this mistaken belief, this grandiose idea that I’m not going to die.
But if in fact I am going to die, it’s going to be at some distant time in the future. As I’ve mentioned numerous times, the path, to a large extent, means to become aware of and begin to transform our mistaken models,, assumptions, beliefs, ideas or those which are in accordance with the actual way things are. This is what it might mean, very essentially, to travel a path. Suffering comes about through a discordance between our beliefs, our storyline that we all have about the world, and the way the world actually is. There’s some discrepancy.
And we have to begin to become aware that we have mistaken storylines, that are mistaken ideas, assumptions, beliefs, bring them to conscious awareness, invalidate them through our reasoning, experience, and intuition. Consistently invalidate them and transform them by this way into beliefs, ideas, assumptions which are accorded with the way things, in fact, are as a means to go beyond all beliefs, ideas, and dwell in the actuality of the world as it, in fact, is. So one way with respect to death, a practical means to begin to transform our mistaken notions that we have, that we all have, about whether we’re going to die or not in the time of our death. It’s called the nine-round death meditation. It has three parts, each of which has three points.
I’m just going to go through this very roughly to familiarize you with it. So the first part, that death is inevitable. Death is inevitable. So this is the statement, and this is going to be supported by three reasons, three points. Death is inevitable.
Firstly, everyone has to die. No matter who it is kings, queens, presidents, writers, musicians, philosophers, saints, criminals ordinary people. They all worked, they ruled, they thought, they wrote, they loved, they enjoyed their life, they suffered, and finally they died. No matter how wealthy a person might be, no matter how powerful, no matter how popular, everyone’s going to have to die. You may intellectually agree with me at this moment, but you have to understand that we can have various beliefs at different levels of cognitive awareness.
You can believe intellectually as if oil floating on water. Yes, everyone has to die. But down here, at the rock bottom, there’s some belief, which you’re holding and clinging to, I’m not going to die. It’s not articulated. It’s not perhaps aware, but it’s there.
One only has to look at the way you behave in your life as a sign that there is this belief at the core of your way of being, that you don’t think you’re going to die. And so we have to, again and again, try to integrate, make that oil mix with the water, to challenge these these core beliefs, assumptions that we have which are mistaken. And no matter who the who we are, look at all the people in the world. How many? Six billion people.
Hundred and fifty years from now, none of them will be alive. They’ll all be dead. They’ll just be a memory. They’ll just be an electronic coating on some floppy disk. You know, you yourself are going to die.
Everybody in this room will be dead in a hundred years. Definite. Hundred and fifty. I don’t want to get anybody frightened and nervous. I’ve only got a hundred years to live.
Okay. Everybody’s gotta die. So we’re trying to support the idea that death is inevitable. The first reason is everyone has to die. We can just enumerate.
We can’t find anybody who we can expect to be living one hundred and fifty years from now, even if they freeze their brain. Lifespan second reason. Second point, your lifespan is constantly decreasing continuously without end.