Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 47-minute session, Ven Jampa Gendun opens with a brief guided meditation — five minutes of breath awareness followed by pure choiceless awareness — before using a passage from psychologist Abraham Maslow on self-actualization to bridge Western striving and Buddhist motivation: once material goals are met, what then? The bulk of the session develops the second of the Three Principal Aspects of the Path, opening to others, with a detailed introduction to the sevenfold cause-and-effect method for cultivating bodhicitta. He establishes equanimity as the foundation — examining how the labels friend, enemy, and stranger are arbitrary and self-reinforcing — then explores the first of the seven causes: recognizing all beings as having been your mother in past lives. To support this, he offers a sustained philosophical case for rebirth, including a television-set analogy to show why brain damage can impair mental function without proving the mind is generated by the brain. Suited to practitioners working through the Lamrim sequence.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 05 3 PA 1988 07 22.mp3
UUID: d8e35523-280d-4db3-bd06-f27fe94e4553
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: Three Principal Aspects of the Path 1988-1990 (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 1988-07-22
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 46.7 minutes
Words: ~5,352
One should realize that one does not meditate in order to go deeply into oneself and withdraw from the world. There should be no feeling of striving to reach some exalted or higher state since this simply produces something conditioned and artificial it’ll act as an obstruction to the free flow of the mind. When performing the meditation practice one should develop the feeling of opening oneself out completely to the whole universe with absolute simplicity and nakedness of mind. Meditation is not to develop trance states rather it is to sharpen perceptions to see things as they are. Meditation at this level is relating with the conflicts of our life, our situations, like using a stone to sharpen a knife, the situation being the stone.
So the simple process of meditation we can gain some control and gain some choice in our life. At the present, we have very little choices in how we react to situations because we have very little perspective. We have little space between ourselves and, our reactions. You know, the the stimulus and the reactions are almost simultaneous simply by developing some awareness, some mindfulness. Awareness in the sense that we know what states of mind, what states of mind are arising and mindfulness determines what states are skillful and which should be avoided if we’re, you know, going to realize the happiness that we’re that we’re all looking for.
So it becomes of initially, it’s a very simple process of creating some space between the stimulus and the reaction so that now we we know we can exercise some choice as to whether to react and how to react. Most of us at present have little choice. It’s more of a our button is pushed and we have a reflex action. So we’re going to meditate on mindfulness of breathing for five minutes. And then at the end of five minutes, we’re going to try to simply be intensively aware without with choiceless awareness, not to any particular object.
We’re not concentrating on the breath, but whatever the mind naturally becomes involved in, then we want to know that. If it’s a thought, if it’s a thinking process, simply note thinking. If it goes to a sound, note hearing. If it goes to a bodily sensation, feeling. Simply from moment to moment be aware of what the mind is attending to.
Know what you what your mind is involved in. Simply dwell in choiceless awareness. Be aware from moment to moment what your mind is involved in whether it’s hearing, thinking, feeling. Now where is that? The Bodhisattva refuge? I don’t have.
May I have one? When you reach the third line, make the substitute at the asterisk. To the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha, I go for refuge until I am enlightened through the merit I create. May I attain Buddhahood for the sake of all beings. To the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha, I go for refuge until I am enlightened through the merit I create.
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. May I attain Buddhahood for the sake of all beings. So we go for refuge to the Buddha, the Dharma, the Sangha, into our own wisdom, to our own innate sanity, potential, our basic intelligence in order to solve the difficulties or problems, to realize the potential which is in all of us. We make use of the Dharma or the teachings, and not necessarily the teachings, that is the way that leads us to the way things actually are, the truth, the various methods, the realizations.
And this within the context of a spiritual community, this is support, inspiration, example. We all have all of us have an impulse toward toward actualizing more of our potentialities, towards self actualization or full humanness or human fulfillment. This is a push toward the establishment of the fully evolved and authentic self and increased stress on the role of integration or unity wholeness Resolving a dichotomy in the higher more inclusive unity amounts to healing a split in the person and making him more unified. This is also an impulse to be the best, the very best you are capable of becoming. If you deliberately plan to be less than you are capable of being, then I warn you that you’ll be deeply unhappy for the rest of your life.
It’s a quote by Abraham Maslow. I think he died the early seventies. He lived in the United States. He’s a psychologist. So he was talking about the process of self actualization is the same as bringing meaning to our life.
They’re very intimately related. It’s something and the meaning is something beyond egoistic meanings that we usually involve ourselves with. For once you have developed an accurate and healthy ego, what then? Once you have met your egoistic goals, once you have the car and the house and some self esteem, once you have accumulated material goods and professional recognition, once all of that, what then? When history runs out of meaning for the soul, when material pursuits in the outer world go flat in their appeal, when it dawns on you for the certain that death only awaits you what then?
Meaning is not found in outward actions or possessions but in the inner radiant current of our of your own being and in the release and the relationship of these currents to the world, friends, to humanity at large and to infinity itself. So whatever we want to call the process that we’re involved in, whether we want to call it a spiritual practice or self actualization or simply to answer the impulse toward authentic way to being to lead a meaningful life and answer the question what is the meaning of life? Then we have to make some effort over and above our egotistical and egoistic you know, concerned with our material welfare. These can bring us comfort but they’re never going to bring us the inner peace. They have their limits and we have to become aware of their limits and their capabilities or are going to lead a very hollow, shallow life and always meet with frustrations and disappointments.
So it doesn’t take so much. It’s not as if the Buddhas or or this impulse within us are demanding that we, you know, we run off to the Himalayan mountains. It’s just that we make some consistent effort that we at least acknowledge, you know, that we have an impulse to becoming a healthy, happy, sane loving human being. That really material wealth and a few attached relationships aren’t going to bring us to fulfillment, aren’t going to help us actualize everything that we can be. Then we simply acknowledge that and make some effort in some small way consistent with this impulse.
And then we’re going to find some peace no matter Then we find some meaning in our lives whether we actualize that potential or not. It doesn’t make much difference. It’s only the matter if we try in some small way in the course of our daily life. So we’re talking about the three principal aspects of the path: developing the determination to be free, opening to others, and seeing deeply into the nature of reality. And we, within the second of these three paths, you’re opening up to others, developing the aspiration to develop oneself in order to be of greater and greater benefit to others so that one can develop the skillfulness, the abilities in order to be more and more help to others.
There are two systems, two methods, techniques to help us to actually develop this altruism, this enlightening mind, awakening heart. It’s simply, you know, as I’ve said before, it’s one thing to wish others to be happy and to wish that you were able, but it’s quite another thing to actually to take the responsibility upon oneself to bring this about in actuality, to put the foundations beneath the castles that we usually build in the air, to realize our greatest yearnings in reality to express them in some concrete way. This takes this is quite a jump, from really a wish to actually taking responsibility, in the real world. And it doesn’t come about by accident or simply by wish but it takes a at first we must be motivated toward that direction and have a sincere wish but then we actually have to cultivate the attitudes necessary, the motivation, the intention until there’s such a time when it becomes an integrated part of our very being that we respond spontaneously and skillfully to the to the needs of others. And so these are two methods to help us develop to integrate this wish and to cultivate it until it becomes a very spontaneous part of us.
There was the sevenfold cause and effect method based on equanimity. First we as our foundation we develop equanimity. That is, essentially, we want to begin to see the arbitrary and changing labels, which we usually designate other beings by friend, enemy, and stranger. The essential insight here is that we want to see that these labels of friend, stranger, and enemy are quite arbitrary. They’re not based on sound rational reasoning and again they’re constantly changing.
A friend can become an enemy, an enemy a friend. So at least we don’t hold as tight to these labels. That we become a little fluid, a little more open in allowing these labels to float. This enemy is not always going to be your enemy, so don’t hold on to that label. By holding on to that particular label you respond in that manner.
You know we’re very much creating our reality from moment to moment. I don’t think any of us realize that to the extent that we are. And part of this momentary recreation of our of our reality is in the labeling process. Designating for example in terms of relationships this person is friend, this person is stranger, this person is enemy. Then through this process of labeling which goes on not consciously but unconsciously we’re going to respond in the manner that we label.
It’s going to become a self fulfilling prophecy. If we label this person for whatever reason, it might be simply that they remind us of somebody we didn’t like when we were little, we don’t like the way they part their hair. It may be an absurd preposterous reason but still you make this label through some association through some karmic affinity or you maybe feel even justified. But whatever the reason by labeling this person enemy you’re going to relate with that person as an enemy and you’re going to develop the animosity, anger, the hatred of an enemy type relationship. And this only reinforces your assumption, Oh, he really is an enemy.
And likewise with a friend, likewise with a stranger. So in this way, the reality begins to The way we relate with reality is confirmed by our experience. And this experience reinforces our attitudes. And the attitudes again reinforce the way we relate and this becomes a vicious circle which we can’t get out of. One way we can begin to to get out of this circle is simply not to hold so tightly to our labels.
In this case a friend, enemy and stranger that we can understand that even though feel that maybe I project an enemy upon this person, that in fact this is quite arbitrary. If you’re willing to go into the reasoning why you feel this way, you may see that has no rational basis. You may see that, Okay, he is my enemy now, but next week he could be my friend. And this happens every day in our life. Perhaps not every day, but we’ve all experienced this fact.
Someone who was an enemy in our childhood can become a very good friend, and likewise the reverse of that can happen. Someone who is a a we all know, who is a good friend of ours can become quite a bitter enemy. Think many couples find that out. So we don’t become have such a degree of attachment to our friends and such a degree of aversion to our enemies, and such a degree of feeling of indifference, unrelatedness, uncaring toward strangers, that we realize that these labels are arbitrary and subject to change very quickly. So we allow the openness to occur and we begin to relate with people more spontaneously within a situation devoid of our particular label.
Based upon this leveling off, this building of a foundation, we develop the sevenfold cause and effect method. The first was recognizing all sentient beings as your mother, then remembering their kindness, repaying their kindness, generating affectionate love, great compassion, exceptional resolve. And then the seventh of these, which is the seventh effect of six causes, is the actual awakening heart, opening our hearts to others, developing the altruistic intention to achieve a healthy, skillful state of mind, loving states of mind, so that you can be of maximum benefit to others in helping them to go beyond their suffering. We were talking last week about recognition of all two weeks ago about recognition of all sentient beings and as I said I think you know this particular system of meditation sevenfold cause and effect precept is is worth making use of because it as you will see it has some very profound aspects to it. But probably the latter of the two systems that is the second system, the exchange of self with others is more accessible to Westerners since it since this particular you know sevenfold cause and effect precept requires that we have a strong conviction in the existence of past lives in order for it to work towards maximum benefit and most of us don’t have that.
So therefore it will not have the same force as perhaps the exchange of self with others. But still I think as you will see as we go through it it’s worth making use of from the standpoint it’s going to develop a lot of our potentials. It’s going to act as a source of growth. And in dealing with this first precept, the first of the seven cause and effect method was recognizing all sentient beings as our mothers. This obviously know, we have to have come to some conviction in past lives because we’re trying to develop the absolute conviction that every sentient being has literally been our mother, just like the mother of this life.
And then no matter where we may go, we were born there in some past life. No matter what situation we may meet, we experience this in the past life. And no matter what individual we may meet, this person has been our mother, our father, our brother, our lover, all those in some particular past lives. We talked about the proof of the existence of past life from the point of view of reasoning. You know, we can talk about past lives, at least some of the possible proofs and, you know, recall either through, for example, hypnotic regression, through spontaneous recall, through developing clairvoyances, through having others tell us about particular past life, you know.
There have been many individuals for the most important in the West has been Edgar Cayce for example, who recalled innumerable past lives of not only himself but other people. And there are other, you know, documented cases of people recalling their past lives. So, you know, we can can make use of these. We can it might help in some way to develop the conviction in past lives. But we went through the various types of reasoning involved.
And it all comes down to within the area of logic is the nature of the mind and the and the the nature of the law of cause and effect. You know whether the mind which is can arise from the brain, from the nervous system. You know, whether at the moment of conception, you know, if the the first moment of consciousness, where did that come from? It’ll come there’s probably maybe three or four possibilities. It could come from, you know, the generated be generated from the nervous system or essentially organic molecules or atoms or matter, you know, Or it came from our parents, our mind came from our parents, or it’s coming from somewhere else.
So we have to this is what we’re investigating when it comes to the point of past and future lives. Where does the mind come from? Where did the first atom come from? I think that’s a good question. Which you asked, you know, you asked to most I go out to Flinders University or Adelaide University and I say, Well, maybe you don’t believe in rebirth, maybe you’re a typical materialist, but where did the first atom come from?
You know, if you say the mind came from the body, okay, the mind came from matter. And they won’t be able to offer you a reason. You know, we’ve actually we’ve become so mechanized in our, you know, what we call the paradigm that we in our scientific paradigm of today that we’ve lost the ability to — we’ve actually taken the divinity out of humanity. We see life as merely an accident of unconscious matter, which is and this is simply one way of looking at the universe. It’s rather a biased way.
It’s not, you know, we shouldn’t we have an unholy prejudice towards scientists through the scientific method born out of Descartes and Newton. But even it’s interesting that the mechanistic science in which so many people played such great faith in founded within the mechanism of the discoveries of Newton and Descartes. They both believed in God. They never for once thought that life was an accident, that somehow it evolved out of some kind of primordial soup or the mind evolved from atoms. Somehow that was kind of embarrassing to most scientists, so they left that part out.
They just took the mechanistic process of how we can very well establish, predict how events in the universe are going to occur. And they thought this was because they had a high degree of predictability, and they thought, Well, this must be truth. But essentially it’s quite biased. But we’ve pretty much accepted it. People will say they don’t believe in past or future lives, but they’ve never really questioned it.
They never really thought about it. There’s no question about this body somehow. When I was young and people had talked about future lives, thought, Well, somehow this body is going to go somewhere else. It’s going to become rejuvenated after it dies and go somewhere else. Simply rejecting these kind of childhood notions doesn’t mean that we should reject rebirth altogether.
We have to look at it with some reasoning, with something of an open mind. So we can at least begin to question. I read something interesting just this week. I was talking two weeks ago when I was discussing the proofs of beginningless mind, which is the foundation for understanding all sentient beings have been your mother. I talked about two types of causes, substantial cause and cooperative cause.
I used the example as using a pot, a clay pot, a ceramic pot. And that the substantial cause of the pot is the clay. And the cooperative cause of the pot the potter, his wheels, you know, the various tools. And what I read this week was quite interesting. It said that one of the main arguments why the mind arises from the brain is that if we poke around in the brain and we get various mental responses, we can anesthetize the brain.
If we cut off a piece of the brain, we lose certain functions mental functions, mental capacities. People no longer can think in certain areas. And he said in this article he was saying that this is very much like if I’m going to paraphrase, make it into a little more simplified a little. If someone had a, for example, a television set and if there’s something going wrong with the television set, if you remove a part maybe the screen becomes narrow. If you twist the dial, it starts to flutter.
You turn the dial, the entire channel switches over. And so by manipulating all the parts inside this television set, you manipulate what’s on the screen. One could get the feeling that all these pictures, these people that one sees on the screen are being somehow generated from inside the television set. Somehow the source of all these people moving around the screen the source of it all is coming out of this television set because Why? Because if I take this piece out and the people become smaller, I take these people out they go away altogether.
So obviously they must be coming from inside this television set. But we all know this is not the case, isn’t it? It’s coming from a television studio hundreds of miles away perhaps. And this is just a basis of transmission, this particular television set. So this is the idea of substantial cause and cooperative cause.
The television set represents a cooperative cause the transmission of what’s going on in the studio. It’s not the source of these images, merely the cooperative cause, the basis for transmitting them. And likewise, there’s no question about that the brain and mind are not there’s an intimate relationship, but it’s the type of relationship which likewise is a cooperative cause. When you get sick, for example, or if you cut away parts of the brain, impair the mental capacity just like taking a transistor out of your television set. Buddhism is saying that the brain is not the source of these images, these thoughts, not the thought awareness, knowing.
That it’s merely a cooperative basis. It’s acting as a support, just like the potter shaping the pot as a cooperative cause. The mind is shaping how the mind is going to be able to express itself. If there’s a cat brain, there’s a cat mentality. You know, there’s a conditioning influence.
So I think these are things we can think about. You know, where did the first atom come from? In modern physics they talk about participatory universe. That is to say that things do not exist objectively out there, divorced of an observer. That the object observed and the observer interact.
There’s nothing out there which is objectively existing that we’re interrelated with everything. And this is what Buddhism has been saying for two thousand five hundred years. Without mind, without an awareness, there are no objects. Without objects, there’s no awareness. They’re completely interdependent.
Therefore there can be no first atom without awareness of that atom. Like and never you know where did the first atom come from? So these are questions which can be raised. And once we begin to see the nature of the mind and relationships of cause and effect, then we can gain some reasonable conviction that simply because the body will deteriorate, dies, that the mind does not necessarily cease. That it can go on and become reassociated with another body.
And this is simply what we’re calling rebirth, reassociated with a new energy pattern which we call body. And this takes place through the force of our karma. The mind is associated with this particular body through the force of past actions. And when these actions, the energy of these actions have been dissipated, we call this death. The mind and the body part.
The body simply rots, returns to the elements, the mind moves on. And due to the force of previous actions, habitual actions, karma, we become reassociated with a new body in the future. And this process has been going on without beginning. There’s never a point we can find where we can say, This is the first moment of mind. Without a first moment of mind, then we can never point to any first birth.
The process of birth, death birth and death has been going on since the beginning of this time. We can never find a beginning to it. If through the course of these infinite number of rebirths we’ve had a mother. Over an infinite period of time, we’ve taken infinite rebirths at infinite number of places, and therefore we cannot logically point to any one person and say, This person has not been my mother in my past life. This person has not been my father, my brother.
We’ve been all things to all people infinite number of times. So you sort of have to start to loosen up your present concepts. We’re very much frozen into a very static way of thinking. Things are like a boiling stew. Sometimes a potato comes to the top and sometimes a carrot and sometimes a celery.
Our relationships with others are tumbling, constantly changing, shifting positions. In this way we begin to gain some perspective and we begin to develop, loosen up our labeling to others, quit holding on to others through tightening. So if we investigate this and get some feeling for it, can begin to think, well, you know, it’s quite a mind opener to think that this isn’t your only life, to think back, well, I existed in a previous life. I don’t know what I did. I don’t know what happened to me.
And then you well, and and before that one, I had another one. Before that, I had another one. Another one. It’s kinda hard to to conceive of. It’s because the mind has been very conditioned to frozen into a mold of only conceiving of what has been present in this life.
We don’t take into consideration that much of our thinking, many of our actions, many of the ways we feel about people are being conditioned by what has occurred in past lives. So we can begin to loosen up these conceptions by beginning to think, Wow, maybe I wonder what I did in a past life. How does it relate to this life? And begin to go back and begin to remember past and past lives that you’ve been everywhere in this universe. You’ve been in almost every situation.
You’ve related with almost every person in almost every way. And you will probably do it again in the future. So it’s essential in this process to begin to develop an awareness that every sentient being every sentient being, you know, we can’t we’re not going to leave out your ex girlfriend or the Russians or whatever, but every sentient being has existed in all these various possible types of relationships with you. In fact, they’ve all been your mother. Everybody in this room has been my mother.
Sorry, mom. They’ve all held us, you know, been just as dear to us as a mother of this life. And then generally, we don’t think you know, you don’t you feel unrelated to most of the people in this room as if they don’t exist, indifferent. So it’s not easy to begin to think, Wow, they all cared for me. They all worried about me, protected me, loved me.
Just as much as my mother, this life, everybody lived for me, but we’ve forgotten over the course of infinite number of rebirths, birth and death. We’ve all forgotten. You were born out of your womb and I was born out of your womb. It’s been going on throughout all this time. So we’re trying to you know, is a process of mind training, isn’t But it’s not brainwashing.
There’s a big difference between brainwashing and mind training. We have to make use of our reasoning, our experience, our intuition and bring it to bear. And to in the process of propagandizing or brainwashing, it’s simply that you have a certain state or idea that you want to incorporate into your mentality. And whether it’s based in reality, whether it’s intuitively harmonious, whether it’s experientially verified, it doesn’t matter. We simply want to incorporate some particular mentality, some idea.
But here we’re trying to train the mind in what, at least from the point of view of Buddhism, is the real situation. We’re trying to train our mind, trying to have insight into the actuality that in fact all beings have been our mother. They’ve loved us and cared for us just like our mother of this life. And we want to develop this sense of dearness, of closeness with every sentient being. This is the training process because ultimately it’s going to lead us to complete awakening of our heart.
If we can see every sentient being as our mother and have the same feeling of caring, protectiveness, I’m going go into this, the kindness of our mother. See every sentient being, you can imagine the revolutionary effect, the transforming effect on the social aspect of oneself. Whether these people happen to be pleasing to us or unpleasing, whether they help us or hurt us, they’re still our mother. They’re still showing us kindness, infinite kindness, unimaginable kindness in the past. You know, usually when somebody you know, someone harms us either physically or mentally, we reserve our judgment to find out what their intention was.
For example, if someone spills coffee on you accidentally, you it’s okay. It’s an accident, okay. But if we find out, you know, that they did it intentionally, then we become very angry, don’t we? It’s just, you know, it’s too much for us. You know, if someone has an accident, we don’t mind too much.
We’d rather it didn’t happen. But if we find out it was on purpose, then we respond with anger. Usually we think this is rather quite a reasonable response and it’s justified. They spilled this coffee on me on purpose and I get angry? Who wouldn’t get angry?
It seems like quite a legitimate response. But can you imagine how wonderful it would be if we were free of having to respond in that way. You know, that is to say, if we were free of other of determining our response in accordance with other people’s intentions. You know, after all, it’s our decision to get angry. We’ve made a decision.
We’ve made a decision about the situation, I’m going to get angry. It depended upon that person’s intention. Now the point is, wouldn’t this limit our freedom, doesn’t it? Wouldn’t it be a wonderful thing if no matter what that person’s intention was, I can decide for myself how I want to respond to that situation? Maybe they intentionally spilled coffee, but still I can decide whether I want to be angry or not.
Now, don’t have that choice. We don’t have that decision. So instead of you know, deciding how we’re going to relate to another person, determining, you know, valuing how we’re going to value another person, we begin to focus on, for example, the Buddha nature, which is a much deeper level, a way of relating with another person. You know what they were called? Yeah.
And others were in the image of God, Christ nature. So the in this in this whatever, you know, various personality personality traits this person may express that they’re beneath this, there’s something much deeper. That’s for example, Buddha nature. And if in all the various situations, no matter what shifting circumstances may arise, if we were to relate not to these shifting appearances, not to the superficial occasions, but on a deeper level, always be looking at their Buddha nature, always be looking at that they’re the fact that they’re a child of God, for example, This would make