Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Ven Jampa Gendun opens this 35-minute session with a sharp psychological observation: just as we cling to a painful self-image because it feels secure, the ego resists any inquiry that might reveal its emptiness. He then walks through the threefold learning process — listening, reflecting, meditating — anchored by a Carlos Castaneda quote on “personal power,” the inner readiness without which even the most profound teaching lands without force. He introduces emptiness and dependent arising as the ultimate object of analysis, and previews four ascending philosophical levels — from belief in a fixed, independent self through to the Consequentialist Middle Way — to be developed in coming sessions. The talk closes with a guided meditation on precious human rebirth, drawing on vivid images of Calcutta poverty, war-torn Beirut, and suburban materialism to sharpen appreciation for the rare opportunity the audience already holds.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 04 3 PA 1989 05 19.mp3
UUID: 95507efc-ea6d-4a9c-8397-1a8379f82315
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: 35.4 minutes
Words: ~3,382
So that’s why, you know, this determination to be free is a must precede seeing deeply in the nature of reality. We simply have too much of an emotional investment in ego to think about questioning its existence unless we see its dissatisfactory quality. That any state bounded by ego is by its very nature dissatisfactory. You know, we have to have this courage, this determination. And it’s very much like seeing ourselves in a very mundane sense, a very mundane example, trying to see ourselves for who we actually are.
You know, it’s extremely difficult to overcome many the conceptions we may have about ourselves. Even if they’re quite negative, still we find some security in them. You know, some facet of the model we hold of ourselves. You know, we cling to it. We selectively filter out experiences and feedback which might contradict that model of ourselves, who we conceive of ourselves to be.
We’re constantly trying to reaffirm this is in fact who I am. Anything which might threaten the conception that we have of ourselves is resisted, is filtered out, is we cultivate a conscious unawareness. There’s a constant resistance to learning and the corollary of learning to change, to growth. We don’t want to change. We don’t want to grow.
Therefore, we don’t want to learn. Therefore, we remain like an ostrich with our head stuck in our ignorance, in our cultivated unawareness. So the process of learning is just is just that. It’s a process, you know, an unfolding a restructuring, a letting go. And this takes a lot of personal power.
It takes courage. It takes intelligence. This process is the process of within the traditional Buddhist way of learning, a threefold activity of listening, reflecting, and meditating. Listening, reflecting, and meditating. The whole of Buddhism is structured around this threefold training process.
The three stages in learning. The first stage is listening. Just hearing or studying about the teachings, about the doctrine, about some facet of it. Listening with an open mindedness, with receptivity. A type of mind which does not distort what is being heard or studied.
This is the initial stage of gathering information, like filling up our data bank, our database. Beginning to understand the various categories, the various terms, how everything fits together, kind of the basic structure. During your course of studying Buddhism, for example, you’re going to hear many things which you probably don’t believe, which you don’t accept, which you don’t like. And that’s okay. That’s fine.
Buddhism doesn’t ask you to believe anything. It doesn’t even ask you to believe in Buddhism. I don’t The Buddha wasn’t even Buddha, a Buddhist. And so there’s probably no reason why we have to be Buddhists. This is a quotation from Suzuki Roshi.
And he mentions Dogen. Dogen was the founder of Soto Zen Buddhism in Japan. Dogen Zenji said, Teaching which is not sound as if it is forcing something on you is not true teaching. The teaching itself is true and in itself does not force anything upon us, but because of our human tendency we receive the teaching as if something was being forced upon us. But whether or not we feel good or bad about it, this truth exists.
If nothing exists, this truth does not exist. Buddhism exists because of each particular existence. If we simply constantly were having our preconceptions confirmed, then what challenge would there be? How much would we have to extend ourselves? In listening to a teaching, we’re going to hear many things that we don’t like, that we don’t believe, that we don’t accept.
We can simply set them on the shelf for the time being, and from time to time bring them down and examine them, Look at them. You can set them back on the shelf. We don’t have to buy the whole supermarket just because we’re going shopping. Whatever is of use to you, whatever works for you, whatever you find beneficial, that’s what you use. You can set the rest aside.
Again, Suzuki Roshi. But there is no certain way that exists permanently. There is no way set up for us. Moment by moment we have to find our own way. Some idea or perfection or some perfect way which is set up by someone else is not the true way for us.
Each of us has to make his own true way, When we do, that way will express the universal way. This is the mystery. When you understand one thing through and through, you understand everything. When you try to understand everything, you will not understand anything. The best way is to understand yourself, and then you will understand everything.
To study Buddhism is to study yourself, and to practice Buddhism is to take what you have learned from studying about yourself and to solve your problems. The Buddhist said, Even at his death, do not accept what I have said out of respect for me, but test it as you would test gold. We’re very fortunate in a way that we don’t have dogmatic Buddhist tradition built up in the West yet, in the sense that have that it’s something very new, very fresh. This is what Suzuki Roshi meant by Westerners having a beginner’s mind, that they’re skeptical, they’re questioning, searching, trying to discover. We all have to make our own way.
We all have to rediscover for the first time everything that the Buddha himself discovered, everything that the Buddhas of the past discovered, both him and her. The process of listening open mindedly without distorting what we’re hearing. Then the second stage of reflecting, and beginning to carefully just simply think about or contemplate what is being received in order to clarify its true significance. When I first received a teaching on emptiness this wasn’t so long ago, maybe sixteen years ago. Oh, yeah.
That’s nice. I didn’t have It didn’t make It didn’t have any force on my mind. I couldn’t see the significance. The teacher was there. The conditions were there, but my mind didn’t have the ability to appreciate what I was hearing at that particular time.
In a week, if necessary, what they call in Buddhism, they call it merit. Usually I call this I translate it as positive potential, but I think it’s something like personal power. Personal power. Without this personal power I’ll read you a quote if I can find it. This is by Don Juan in the books of Carlos Castaneda.
It doesn’t matter what one reveals or what one keeps to oneself, he said. Everything we do, everything we are, rests on our personal power. If you have enough of it, one word uttered to us might be sufficient to change the course of our lives. But if we don’t have enough personal power, the most magnificent piece of wisdom can be revealed to us, and that revelation won’t make a damn bit of difference. Bringing some sort of personal power to what you’re hearing.
The truth is only significant to the point, to the level that we can understand that it makes some significant change in our life. Otherwise, it’s meaningless. And this requires some personal power on our side. And this is being emphasized, I think last Tuesday night by Rinpoche, our teacher. The necessity of combining personal power with meditation, that one or the other by themselves is not sufficient.
That the meditation is like planting a seed. And personal power is like the water, the fertilizer, the good earth, which gives rise to the crops. We need both of these. So here we’re talking about the second stage in this process, learning of reflecting. Coming to a true appreciation of the significance of what it is you have been hearing.
You may begin to examine what has been heard or studied in the light of one’s own reasoning, one’s own experience. Is it true? Is this my experience? Is this teaching false? Beginning to question your own experience, your own method of coming to a valid conclusion, your method of reasoning.
Through this method, through this questioning, doubts are going to arise, doubts. Here we’re talking about healthy doubts as opposed to cynical doubt. Cynical doubt in the sense of merely There’s no spirit of true open inquiry. One is simply trying to reinforce one’s own preconceptions. There’s no real openness.
There’s no real spirit of inquiry. One needs to know the truth. Simply trying to tear down an argument so you won’t have to question your own preconceptions, simply trying to reinforce your own preconceptions. Doubt is a precursor to knowledge. In this context, seeing deeply into the nature of reality, the great Indian master, Āryadeva, in a text called The Four Hundred, said that merely even having a doubt to whether things truly exist or not shakes the very foundation of cyclic existence.
Merely having a doubt about the nature of whether the ego is illusory or not shakes the very root of cyclic existence, of ego based existence. Obviously, by doubt they mean a very deep questioning, a real opening to other possibilities, a fluid state. You’re not quite sure you’re open to change. Then the third stage of this process is meditation. Beginning to integrate this newly acquired knowledge or understanding into one’s being, into one’s character, and beginning to change.
In a sense, this is like putting into practice. When we talk about meditation, meditation practice, it doesn’t mean that we are practicing meditation so that one day we can perfect it, so that one day we will be able to give a perfect performance of how to be a meditator. Rather, it’s the practice in the sense of actually being it or actually doing it as opposed to just thinking about it. We become love rather than thinking about love. We’re not writing a psychological report on the nature of love.
We’re trying to become love when we meditate on love and compassion. We become it. We be love. You’re practicing in this way. Rather than thinking about the nature of reality, trying to see the nature of reality.
Rather than thinking about love, trying to be love. This is the quality of meditation. At the listening stage we gather all the bare facts, see how all this information fits together. Then at the reflection stage, using our reasoning and experience, we gain some certitude. We’re creating and clarifying our doubts.
We begin to gain knowledge. We begin to gain some confidence in what it is. Look at this confidence. This is one of the qualities that we talked about that makes the Buddha a worthy refuge fearlessness. To dwell in an egoless state requires fearlessness, confidence.
A coward cannot transcend their ego. It takes some courage, confidence, the very basis of your being, basic sanity, love and compassion. You begin to base all your way of relating within that, a courageous way of being, confident in your own Buddha nature. Out of this confidence, we begin to embark on the third stage, that is meditation. All the doubts and all the hesitations begin to disappear, and one experiences directly the true meaning of the teaching.
This is the learning process, the threefold learning process. You know, it’s said that meditation without listening, without reflecting is blind, and that listening and reflecting without meditation is like having eyesight but no legs. So these two must go together reflecting, listening on the one hand, and meditation on the other. So, in Buddhism, we’re going to talk about dependent arising. The corollary, the counterpart of dependent arising, the other side of the coin of dependent arising is emptiness, which is the ultimate nature of reality.
This is what we’re going to try to see when we talk about seeing deeply into the nature of reality. We’re trying to see emptiness. We’re trying to see dependent arising. This is what Tsongkhapa is telling us that we must understand if we want to cut the root of cyclic existence. It is the endpoint of one’s analysis.
In other words, the most basic or fundamental element of our existence or experience is emptiness. For example, if one takes a clay pot, a potter would look at the pot and might say that in absolute terms the pot is made out of clay. A scientist might say, It’s a collection of atoms. Or if he would be more precise, he might even say, The atoms themselves consist of subatomic particles whirling around in space. But even that would be just more and more rough approximations of what the fundamental reality of that pot is.
Even now, in absolute terms, atomic particles can no longer be defined precisely. They cannot be said to be this or that, cannot be said to be here or there. They’re beginning to talk about subatomic particles simply in the sense of probabilities. Probably, no doubt, in a few years scientists are going to be will express their nature very differently than they are now. So in the same way we talk about ultimate truth.
Ultimate truth is emptiness. It presents itself differently to practitioners at various levels of their practice. As there emerges in the experience of an individual practitioner, it has occurred historically in the way that Buddhist scriptures emerged. There’s been this progressively increasing subtlety of the teachings. Ultimately, we’re trying to understand dependent arising.
That’s what Tsongkhapa is telling us that we have to do. In particular, we have to understand it as it is presented by the Consequentialist Middle Way school. We’re going to talk roughly over the next period of time about the various schools and how each of them present ultimate reality a little more subtly than the next. The Consequentialist Middle Way school is said to be the final thought of the Buddha with respect to the nature of reality. But in coming to this, such an understanding, it’s highly doubtful that a person is going to gain an accurate understanding of the most profound teachings without going through the progressive stages of the teachings leading up to that.
We have to begin to break down grosser misconceptions before we can get to the more subtle. And this is this progressive stages of coming to an understanding and coming to a realization of the nature of reality. We’re going to look at four readily recognizable stages. From a gross understanding to increasingly subtle levels of understanding about the nature of reality. We won’t go into them tonight.
We’re going to begin with a rather coarse explanation of what we mean by, for example, the nature of the ego, its evolution, how it is maintained. This progress and subtlety of understanding. It’s very much like this idea of personal power. Maybe I’ll save that. Anyway, we’re going go through four, at least four very well defined levels of understanding.
From the very coarsest explanation of the way things exist, especially with the nature of the self, the ego, a singular, unchanging, independently existing self, down to the most subtle explanation, the ultimate thought of the Buddha with respect to the nature of reality, dependent arising, emptiness, the lack of inherent existence, the lack of true existence, and all the various possible degrees of subtlety between those two. The hearer stage, the mind only stage, the autonomy middle way school stage, the Consequentialist Middle Way school stage, these four recognizable levels that we’re going to work with in coming to think deeply into the nature of reality. Although these stages are named after Buddhist schools that formulated them, in fact, they represent stages in the development of an individual’s understanding of the nature of reality. Each level of understanding builds upon the preceding one. Each stage challenges more and more deeply held misconceptions, views, models of reality.
But finally, we go beyond all models, all views altogether. We see how things actually are directly, unmistakenly. This has the exponential consequence of peace, of love, and compassion, and simply most well-being as was described earlier. We’ll start that next week. So if you’d like to stand up for a moment, then we’ll sit in meditation.
We’re working through a system of meditations called the graduated path. Perhaps if you remember, the basis of the path is gaining some confidence in yourself that you have the potential for change, for transformation. This idea of confidence is quite important. Conviction that you can do it, that you can solve your problems, that you can change, that you can become the type of person that you want to be, and making effort in that direction. That was our last meditation.
But we go on from there, you know, we begin to recognize and appreciate the opportunity that we have, that we have everything that we need, all the various conditions. We have the main cause within ourselves of Buddha nature, of basic sanity, native intelligence, whatever you want to call it. That’s the seed. But we also have the field about us, the cooperative condition. We have to begin to appreciate this very deeply, that there’s nothing outside of ourselves that are lacking, That we don’t have to wait for something more.
That it’s all there if we’re willing to make use of it, to take advantage of it. So this would be tonight’s meditation. So if you sit comfortably, I’ll lead you through the meditation. Imagine yourself as a mother or father living on the streets of Calcutta with a family, four or five children, poor and hungry. Spend the whole day, perhaps sixteen hours, seventeen hours, going from person to person, begging, trying to get enough money to feed your family for that day, knowing that if you don’t, they’re going to go hungry, tired, and hurt, and worn.
And ask yourself, as you come home, as the sun is setting, tired, worn out, hungry. If at that time you can go home and meditate, if you can go out to listen to a teaching on the Dharma, read a book, If you can take the time, if you have the energy to try to seek to improve your mind, to grow, how would you feel in that position? Could you even begin to conceive of such a possibility? Imagine yourself in Lebanon, in Beirut, whether Christian or Muslim. The shells are exploding day after day after day.
People are being killed all about you. Never a moment’s peace, living in a basement in fear. Do you have the time? Do you have the thought to seek to develop your mind to realize your potential? Under those conditions?
What can you do? Or even in Australia, imagine yourself completely caught up in materialism, struggling for power, for status, for money, constantly trying to work out new methods, new plans, ideas to further your gain. Constantly involved in the struggle without a thought to your own mind, without a thought to qualities such as love, wisdom, completely caught up, what could you do in that position? What would happen if you were an alcoholic, a drug addict? Your mind dulled without any clarity?
Constantly involved in craving and delusion. No control. Or if you were undergoing chemical therapy, had cancer, in pain, having to take drugs constantly. What happens to your chance to use your potential completely? Look at your life.
You live in a free country where all your material needs are easily met. You’re healthy. You have some wisdom, some intelligence, some love, kindness in your heart. You have the time, the inclination. It’s very, very rare.
Very few people have what you have, a chance to really transform yourself, to change, to grow, to realize all that you can be. Very special. You should appreciate yourself and what you have and make use of your time, your opportunity. And we’ll dedicate the personal power to be created from thinking this way. Through these merits, may I soon attain the enlightened state of Guru Buddha, and may I lead every migrating being without exception to that enlightened state.
May the precious bodhicitta not yet born rise and grow. May that born have no decline, but increase forevermore.