Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. The story of a king who wanted to cover his entire kingdom in leather to avoid stepping on thorns — rather than simply wrap his own feet — opens this 45-minute talk by Ven Jampa Gendun, setting up his central argument: controlling the mind changes everything. He diagnoses Western culture’s over-reliance on rational thinking since Newton, arguing that meditation restores non-linguistic, intuitive modes of knowing that most people have lost. The Dhammapada’s opening verses — “We are what we think” — ground the doctrinal case for mind as world-creator. Core instruction centres on his “hot dog” analogy for the noting technique: thoughts arising in awareness are like stadium hot dogs passed along a bleacher row — note them, don’t bite in, don’t identify with them. He closes with the case that seeds of wisdom, compassion, and energy are already present in every person, making Buddhahood a realistic rather than romantic aspiration. Well-suited to newer practitioners exploring meditation and Buddhist philosophy together.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 05 3 PA 1989 02 24.mp3
UUID: eeff0bb2-3090-4b9e-9f9d-3e961bf95b98
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: Three Principal Aspects of the Path 1988-1990 (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 1989-02-24
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 45.3 minutes
Words: ~5,387
Meditation is very much a way of realistically dealing with our problems, beginning to deal. Not perhaps with the particular instances, but the underlying themes, the underlying patterns, our particular style of relating, perhaps unskillful style, beginning to uncover some neurotic patterns that particular problems are an expression of. There was I think it’s becoming, I think, perhaps very evident to many people that we have had some difficulties in the West, perhaps in our way of thinking, in the sense that we have become predominantly dependent upon a certain mode of approaching life, using our rational reasoning mind as a method for answering all our problems. We very much consider this the only way that we can know anything. Perhaps this started I don’t know.
Perhaps not so much interested in the philosophical aspects of it, with Newton and down through Locke and some of the philosophers. But there arose this division between mind and what the outside world phenomena matter. And the only way to approach this was to somehow to this struggle, this conflict between supposedly this inert mindless matter in this mind, gaining this control over our environment, this struggle against nature. And we relied very much on the power of reasoning. This was began to be more and more the only way which we saw as a valid way of knowing, as a valid way of relating.
And we’ve lost perhaps males more than females especially, but to some degree all of us have lost many of our abilities to know things in none but rational forms of understanding through feelings, through intuition. I think it’s very important for us to give ourselves a chance to get back in touch with our, what is, non linguistic approaches to understanding, to relating with the world and people. And I think very much that we can use the process of meditation to begin to uncover some of the faults of, you know, this continual inner dialogue which never ceases and give us the chance to expand our awareness beyond the inner dialogue to other realms of our consciousness, of our mind, of our psyche, around other possibilities of ways of being rather than this predominant rational approach that we’re very much stuck in. That’s not to say that we should somehow be unreasonable. That’s not the point.
This is that there’s other, equally authentic ways of relating, outside of our usual habitual patterns of this rational, reasonable approach It has its place in all our various potentials of the mind, of methods of relating. But somehow we’ve become fixated and now we can’t stop and it’s become pathological. There’s a great deal of preconscious processing going on within our mind. Meditation is a way to help us to uncover this preconscious processing and begin to see how our mind is actually operating. The conscious aspect of our mind, that is to say, by conscious, the self awareness, the self consciousness aspect where we know what we are doing and we know what we are thinking, we perform tasks rationally.
This inner dialogue process, this making use of language is, in a way, just simply a tip of a very deep iceberg of the possibilities of the extent of what we call mind. And we’re very much out of touch with the rest of the great preponderance of our personality, of our potential. We’re very much living on a small island when in fact there’s this great world that we could be exploring, that we could be making use of. You know, this kind of raw materials that we could be Constructing the type of world that we want to live in, making use of all our tools. Because very much we are creating the type of world that we live in continually, moment by moment, recreating.
So, in the process of meditation we can begin to get in touch perhaps, and begin to see the process of how our mind is operating, the preconscious levels of our of this of where actually many of our problems originate, you know, without even aware of it, below the threshold of our self consciousness. So, it’s not so much that we are trying to use meditation simply as a means because you’re upset that you want to settle down, that you want to quiet your mind. That is a productive side effect of meditation. But it has a much more deeper and much more profound potentiality and possibilities of an actual transformation of the way, you know, we view the world and therefore we are able to change the world. I think very much the people saw the world differently previous to say three or four hundred years ago.
And the world was different. It’s not to matter that somehow there’s an objective reality existing apart from our minds. This is a rather recent in the history of humankind, a recent invention that somehow the earth that the reality is somehow objectively objectively existing apart from our minds, separate from our minds. That in fact the world that we live in is being created and whatever is happening within it with that Whatever is happening within our particular reality is very much dependent upon our own mind, that we’re in fact creating it. We can create our own pure land within You know, Buddhism they talk quite often about pure lands.
You know, if this place where we’re sitting now is not a pure land, then the pure land doesn’t exist. That the place we sit, this very place, is perfect in its own way, in its own right. There’s no flaw, it has no imperfections. If your mind is pure, then all things in your world are pure. It very much depends upon our perceptions.
And so we’re working on it. We can work on a very basic level of the way we perceive the world. And changing the way we perceive the world, we change our world. If we can change that one thing, our mind, and we can change everything. You know, we can’t control the outside world.
We can’t order it to the way we might like it to be. But if we’re able to control one thing, then we have to achieve the same effect, and that is if we are able to control our own mind. There’s a was just looking for a verse from the the Dharmapada, which I don’t have. There’s a story about a king who was out walking one day. His through his village he stepped on a thorn and it was very painful.
And he went back to his palace and he called together all his ministers and he said, know, look at my foot. It’s swollen, it hurts. You know, we’ve got to do something about it. I don’t want this to happen again. And so they thought about it and they thought about it and they said, Well, you know, what can we do?
What can we do? And finally one person, one wise minister spoke up and said, We’ll cover all the streets in your kingdom, all the roads in your kingdom with leather. And then wherever you walk, you you’ll never step on a thorn again. And the king thought, Oh, what a bright fellow. It’s a great idea.
Let’s go ahead and let’s do that. But then, of course, the treasurer spoke up and said, We can’t do it. We don’t have the money. We don’t have the resources to undertake such a project. So they thought and they thought.
And finally, wisest of the ministers spoke up and she said, you know, Why don’t we just take a piece of leather the size of the bottom of your foot and cut it exactly to the shape of the bottom of your foot and bind it to your foot. And then wherever you go, it will have the same effect as if we covered all the roads in your kingdom with leather. So if we can control this one thing that is our mind, it’s as if we can control the world. We can’t order the world, we can’t arrange the world to our liking, no matter who we might be, no matter how powerful we might be, no matter how, what, holy we might be. But if we can control this one factor of the mind, it’s as if we control the world.
We create our own world. Now, even each of us here is living in one to a large degree in their own self created world. And that world can be the hell or a heaven. And the mind in its place, its way, make a heaven of hell and a hell of heaven. And the very first verse is from the Dhammapada, which is a very a collection of sayings of the Buddha, which is a very important text within the Theravadan tradition.
We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts we make the world. Speak or act with an impure mind, and trouble will follow you as the wheel follows the ox that draws the cart. We are what we think.
All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts we make the world. Speak or act with a pure mind and happiness will follow you as your shadow unshakable. So, if we can begin to work with our mind and begin to see how it’s operating on a very deep level and we can begin to develop more skillful ways of relating. As I mentioned, we’re going to talk about the various misconceptions that are at the root of our problems.
The most basic of our thought patterns are involved in an error of approaching the way reality actually exists, both ultimately and conventionally, conventionally in the sense of mistaking how we can exist in relationship to others. As if we could exist somehow in a mansion within one room of that mansion and decorate that one room and let the entire mansion, the rest of the remaining rooms fall in decay and somehow remain immune, insulated from what is happening around us. That is to say that we don’t no man or no person is an island unto themselves. That we’re very much bound up with this being called humanity, if you like, sentient life. You know, we’ll talk about that when we cover review the second principal aspect of the path opening up to others, opening our hearts to others.
And the second is that the idea of separateness which is as a coarser, you know, has implications on the conventional level but ultimately seeing things as being concrete, separate entities that apart from our mind, apart from other things around them. And this has the quality of causing us to engage in them in a very unskillful fashion. And then when we talk about seeing deeply into the nature of reality, that will be the subject that we’re going to look into. Creating some space to be able to open up beyond the present dialogue, which is constantly operating within our mind. Be able to go into nonverbal levels of being, rerouting our sense of identity and being as opposed to our constant becoming, the constant rational process of manipulation, of competitiveness, of comparing opinionatedness, discriminatory quality of our existence, which is completely bound up in struggle and conflict.
Know, as beginning to develop the faculties of openness and fluidity, relying on the qualities of being the possibility of relying on intuition, on feeling, on aesthetic qualities. I think these are open up the within meditation we can open up to these possibilities more and more because we begin to go beyond the perpetual dialogue which we’re constantly caught up in, in our mind. So, you know, we’re using the techniques of mindfulness of breathing, just as a way of approaching the problem of learning about our mind, developing the ability to relax and become aware. Know, awareness is probably the most single important factor in our life, in whatever we might be doing. You know, as T.
S. Eliot said, we’ve all had the experience but we missed the lesson. We missed the lesson because we weren’t aware. But somehow we’ve had enough problems but we haven’t learned from them. We haven’t learned from our mistake.
And as it said again and again in history, if you don’t learn from history you’re doomed to make you’re bound to make the same error again and again. And likewise for our self unless we begin to see the patterns of our existence, the mistaken, the faulty ways of relating, then we’re going to do them, repeat them again and again and again. So we have to develop the factor of simple awareness in our everyday life. And then we can use our meditation to help us develop this factor of becoming aware of the state of our mind, the way it’s operating. So also the factor of mindfulness, developing the factors of concentration, of the complete integration.
The other night there was a question, it was last night, in the awareness and knowledge. You know, we’re studying in the study of mind. There was a question about the factors of mind, how were in the opening the eye of new awareness. We were studying about how to develop calm abiding, a very concentrated type of mind. And about overcoming the faults, there’s a various list of faults which have to be overcome using antidotes in order to develop this very calm, peaceful, concentrated mind.
And the question came up, well, seems as if there’s various parts of the mind and one part is struggling with the other part. And this, in fact, is the case. That there’s, you know, in one way of dividing the mind, it said that there are fifty one secondary mental factors within the mind. There are fifty one components of the mind. One way of categorization.
And much the time, our mind is as if fighting against itself. So that the development of calm abiding is an integration of all our energies, of all these components. You know, there develops a wholeness, a singularity of direction. You know, this is simply what we call concentration. And so there’s this integration of all our energies, all our being.
And this is the process of which is occurring in meditation. And this process is aided by the factor of mindfulness. So we’re developing the factors of mindfulness and awareness. Awareness as an aid simply by noting, you know, beginning to become aware of what our mind is actually involved in, and the factor of mindfulness as an aid, a technique, counting. You know, I can You know, one analogy which might be helpful, which I mentioned before, but I’ll mention it again since the beginning of the year, of the process of gaining awareness through the by use of the technique of noting.
You know, that oftentimes, usually we don’t recognize thoughts as thoughts. We identify with them and they become I. And therefore it was as if we’re carried away, you know, on this stream of thoughts and it’s our whole life becomes becomes a tale of thoughts. It’s as if using the analogy of, you know, going to a football game in the United States. United States.
I have been to a football game in Australia. So I don’t know if they do this or not. Anyway, they sell hot dogs in the United States and they walk and down the stands. The bleachers, we call them. And they sell, you know, they have these boxes.
They have hot dogs, lots of hot dogs. They carry them around their necks. And there’s a there’s the rows of bleachers, the rows of seats, and then perhaps there’s about thirty people sitting along one row. You know, if somebody wants a hot dog, they just kind of raise their hand and the guy nods and he takes out a hot dog and then they signal what they want. They want mustard, they want relish, or they want onions.
And he spreads it on there. And of course, would be too difficult to walk up and down the aisle because there’s no aisle. The next bleacher is very close. So the easiest thing to do is to pass it on. So the first person takes the hot dog and passes it to the second person, the second person, third person, and the hot dog works its way down the bleacher seats until it gets to the person who wants the hot dog.
So, you know, you the situation is such that you’re sitting there watching intently, you know, the baseball game. You’re very intent on watching the game, and someone taps you on the shoulder, you look over and and he hands you he puts his hotdog in your hand. Now, you know, here’s this hotdog, you know, it’s a fresh bun, it’s very soft, it’s got all this nice relish and mustard on it. You might be tempted to bite into it, you know, just to I mean, it looks Yeah, that might be the first impulse that comes to your mind. Just take a big bite out of it.
But this is, you know, it’s not your hot dog. If you want a hot dog, you can order up your own. Your job is simply to pass the hot dog along to the next person. So likewise, all these various thoughts which arise in our mind, we can This is called trans hot dog analysis. Just simply passing the hot dog along.
You don’t have to bite into them. You know, they might look tempting. You know, they might look I don’t know what you’re into. Everybody’s got their particular style. But anyway, whatever their thought might have been, you know, about some future past happy time or some past happy times or future fantasies, possibilities, or you know, maybe you may have to make your shopping list, whatever.
The idea is simply to note it, you know, it’s only a hot dog. It’s not your hot dog. You don’t have to identify with this hot dog. You You don’t have to identify with this thought. You don’t have to identify with this feeling, this emotion.
It arose out of this out of as if out of the ocean, like a wave coming up out of the ocean due to various causes and conditions being present. And if there’s neither suppression, and if this wave is not energized in any way through either suppression or indulgence, then the wave is simply going to return back to its source, back into the ocean, and disappear. It’s impermanent. It will arise, abide, and cease within itself, within its nature within the nature of the mind. Within the mind, the place where it arose, it will it will return back into within the mind.
We don’t have to bite into it. We don’t have to identify with it. Usually we do. This is me. This is me.
I am this thought. You know, we don’t think that, but that is the process. That’s the way the I, the ego, is operating. This is its way of enlivening itself, you know, the thinker of this thought. I am as if we’re the agent which is producing this thought and maintaining it.
This simply comes about to identifying. And we can cease this, and we can go beyond ways of being which are bounded this perpetual identifying with ego, which are patterned, which are constantly a struggle and conflict, simply by not identifying with these processes which are constantly taking place. It’s not to say if you want a hotdog, you can’t order one up. If you have some plans to make, if you want to think about something, memory, if you want to fantasize, that’s great. We can do that too.
We can make use of this potentiality of the mind, this thought, this rational potential, this rational characteristic of our mind. It’s quite useful. But then again, we should be able to have some choice in other modes of being open to us. So we can train ourselves in the possibility of going beyond the dialogue which we’re constantly caught up in, this gossip which is constantly occurring in our mind, and being able to dwell in other states of being, be able to relate in other ways beyond linguistic possibilities, beyond even egoistic centered possibilities, the ways of being which are self authenticating within themselves. Simply by not taking a bite out of the hot dog.
So it’s a training, isn’t it, in another way of being. It opens up faster potentials in our mind. I think this is becoming more and more apparent in much of modern science, you know, much of modern psychology, cognitive sciences, physics, that the reality is simply not objective, it’s a participatory universe. We’re very much creating the world in which we live, that there’s vast potentials within our mind which go unused, unknown, simply because we find it so difficult to go beyond our perpetual habit of dwelling within this constant inner dialogue. That this is us.
I am this inner dialogue. And not willing to be able to broaden our scope of who in fact we are. This is the possibility which opens to us in meditation to begin to see the spaces between the waves and exist within those spaces and to find continuity of being within those spaces, being open to allowing the possibility of other potentials to arise in between those waves of two thoughts and seeing how the thoughts actually arise and how they abide and see how the mind is actually operating. And that way they become more and more transparent. They’re not as solid.
The eye isn’t quite as solid. The ego isn’t quite as solid as it was. So there’s a lot to be learned, think, and lots to be benefited. And it doesn’t have to be You know, as I said, there are many ways of knowing, many ways of being aside from rational. You know, I’m not talking about irrationality.
There’s a fear of irrationality, the whole idea, isn’t there? We’re very much trapped into this idea. If something is irrational, it’s insane. This is a bias which we are very much ingrained in ourselves. And therefore, there’s a fear of acting in an irrational way.
Even the word sounds fearful, irrational. He’s being irrational. You know, is an artist creating a painting, are they rational or irrational? Is the creative process rational or irrational? Is love rational or irrational?
Is intuition rational or irrational? You know, many, many really authentic ways of being are outside of this rational boundary, but we don’t usually conceive of them that way. Even the word kind of frightens us to be irrational. It’s as if we were it’s like losing an anchor. And this anchor, it is very much an anchor, but it’s perhaps not a desirable type of anchor.
It might be holding us down when we could be flying. I don’t know. Something like that. Anyway, I don’t think there’s anything to fear. That’s perhaps not the point.
It’s just that when we consider the situation that we’re involved in, in our constant struggle, our constant conflict, our constant inability to be, to simply to operate on non linguistic, non rational modes of being, we have this inability to a large degree. I think meditation is a way to allow ourselves to open up to these possibilities. And we might find ourselves simply becoming gentler people, more compassionate people, kinder people, more creative, more intuitive, simply by opening up our potential outside of this constant inner dialogue. Other modes of being, possibilities of our mind become accessible to us. And these are valid ways of being.
These are valid ways of relating, even though we perhaps cannot rationally manipulate them. You know what I mean? Think women perhaps do more than men. But, like, the possibility of relying on intuition. For men, that’s quite fearful fearful, in a way.
Not to be able to, you know, logically come to a decision, some kind of conclusion, and follow that through. It’s just the feeling that this is the right thing to do. These kinds of qualities that perhaps women have remained much more in touch with intuitive qualities than men have been forced, for one reason or another, into the extreme of logic. And so, we can You know, meditation. This is simple, quiet development of awareness and mindfulness, creating the space, going to open up beyond the inner dialogue, opens the possibilities for creating more balance within our lives, and accessing more different modes of being, ways of relating.
Even though we might not be able to rationally understand the process, what it means rationally to be intuitive, what it means rationally to feel, be creative. It would be a disaster if we were stuck on the rational level our entire lives. You know, it’d be like a computer, I think. And perhaps that’s the difference between us and computers. Computers can’t feel or don’t perhaps don’t have intuition, creativity, But they have a very good logic system.
Don’t know. You know more about that than I do. So we can try that. You take a comfortable posture and we’ll do mindfulness of breathing for a few minutes. You can use the techniques of counting, of noting.
Last week, when I was talking about the idea of of refuge, the idea of of reorientation, the Continue on necessity to have stock taking about what is the direction you’re moving into, that you’re heading. Is that a desirable direction according to whatever value system that you have set up, if in fact you’ve set up any value system autonomously. Maybe it’s just a reactive type of value system, a value system which has been accepted from outside yourself. However, are you becoming the type of person that you might like to be five years from now, ten years from now? This idea of taking a direction, you know, which we traditionally in Buddhism call simply call taking refuge, taking, you know, some kind of authentic means to become, as far as Buddhism is concerned, what we conceive of ourselves as our potential, in which in the Buddhist context of being, you know, ultimately a Buddha, you know, and by that simply a loving, healthy, kind, sane human being.
The qualities of a Buddha, the qualities of knowing things how they actually are, and awareness, the idea of awareness without any mistakes, without any misconceptions, and direct knowing, in the idea of love and compassion, of taking responsibilities, of a more universal perspective outside of our usual parochial, single pointed, egotistical point of view. And the idea of spontaneous creative energy activity working to benefit others. These are qualities of an enlightened mind. And so the question arises, you know, are these These sound nice. I think everybody would agree.
But in fact, as a possibility of actualization, as a possibility of our way of being. You know, are these simply romantic notions or in fact, there something about us which naturally suggests these possibilities? Or is it just kind of an advertising trick to get us to become Buddhist? Something like that. So, you know, think that we should ask that question.
It might sound nice to be a happy, healthy, loving, sane human being, but you know me. You know me. No way. You know? Maybe the person sitting next to me, I don’t know.
I don’t know them that well. But maybe they’re talking about somebody else and other people, you know? Something, perhaps something like that. So the question, you know, can I become a happy, loving, healthy, sane human being? Can I take that direction?
Is there something about myself which naturally suggests that possibility that, you know, is it realistic? Is it really worth my trouble to try to work toward that end? Am I just fooling myself? Something like that. You know, I think you should question everything.
And as I’ve said before, that Buddhism doesn’t ask us to believe in anything. It doesn’t even ask us to believe in Buddhism. Actually, very much more than not, belief is an obstacle to discovery, to really seeing our preconceptions about often act as an obstacle, as a hindrance, as a veil to really find out what actually is. And that’s what’s important, you know. It’s the truth which actually makes you free, not our conceptions about the truth, not our beliefs about it.
So, it’s this idea about the type of person that, at least from the Buddhist point of view, that we’re working toward, you know, coming to Buddha. There’s not much money in it, and not a very popular ambition. There’s universities open that you can get a degree in Buddhahood and you won’t get a job. It’s not very practical in a way, is it, in our materialistic society. You have to come here and it’s hot and people like me just carry on, you know, talking and talking.
Of course, we’re fortunate that we have such people as Geshe-la, are very much actualizing this quality in their lives, this quality of wisdom and love and compassion, working to benefit others. But still, maybe he came off Mars, he didn’t he’s not you know, he’s from somewhere else, up the mountain somewhere. He was born that way, you know, just like the Dalai Lama, just like Mother Teresa, you know, have these spiritual molecules kind of in their brain. And I just don’t have the same, you know, electrical pattern or organic set up in my mind and my brain, and now I’m stuck. Something like that, maybe, I don’t know.
Is there something about my present mentality which suggests the possibility of growth in that direction? The qualities of knowing how things actually are, supreme knowledge, the quality of love and compassion, awakening heart, and the quality of enlightened generosity, you know, creative activity and working to benefit others. Is there something about me which suggests that? So we all we all have some knowledge. Some some experience of reality, both perhaps on the conventional and ultimate.
It may be faint, it may be obscure, but we all have some non mistaken understanding of the way things are, from time to time, some glimmer. We all have some feelings of love and compassion. No matter how limited, no matter how exclusive they may be, it’s still there. And we all have some energy to some extent, even no matter how unspontaneous, how unrefined it might be. There’s some energy there.
So it’s as if all the qualities, the seeds are there, present within our mind, within our own being. The seeds of knowledge, of love, compassion, and energy. So we don’t have to think that somehow we got when God was passing out brains, we were last in line and he ran out or something. Or that there’s something wrong with our molecular makeup or that somehow because of my childhood upbringing, I’m stuck with this particular way of relating, this particular mentality. But in fact, you know, all the qualities, the basis of growth, the seeds of Buddhahood, and everyone.
And everyone in this room, we don’t have to ask anyone for them, don’t have to buy them, we don’t have to beg for them, we don’t have to go anywhere outside of ourselves. They’re all within ourselves. We’re becoming very much convinced of this. Simply creating what we call the substantial causes for Buddhahood are in every sentient being. We just have to simply create the cooperative conditions.
You know, just like bringing the soil, the water, the light, the warmth together in conjunction with the central main cause of the seed, and we can grow the flower of an enlightened mind within ourselves. This is the ultimate optimism of Buddhism, that it’s all there. We just have to create the proper conditions.