Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. A dream fire cannot burn on waking — this image drives Ven Jampa Gendun’s 46-minute walk through four philosophical stages of seeing into the nature of reality, the third of the three principal aspects of the path. After briefly recapping reasoned and trusting faith, Gendun traces the progression: the Hearer stage dissolves belief in a fixed self through four analytical steps; the Mind Only stage introduces three natures (imaginary, dependent, thoroughly established) and the principle that the map is not the territory; and the Autonomy Middle Way School’s central claim that nothing exists independently of the conceiving mind. He closes by drawing a parallel to physicist Wheeler’s suggestion that subatomic particles did not exist before 1900, framing Buddhist philosophy as an early arrival at what contemporary physics calls a participatory universe.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 05 3 PA 1990 10 19.mp3
UUID: adf7ef60-efb6-4b96-9f8a-a7cd831ee40c
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: Three Principal Aspects of the Path 1988-1990 (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 1990-10-19
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 45.6 minutes
Words: ~5,178
As I’ve mentioned previously that the causes for committing oneself to the inner principle of Buddha by means of the Dharma in the social context of a spiritual community are anxiety and faith. In terms of faith, I discussed two types of faith, reasoned faith and trusting faith. Reasoned faith in the sense that one analyzes what is being said, the significance, the meaning of the teaching, and validates it within one’s own experience, through one’s own reasoning, and develops a sense of conviction in what is being said as true and worthy of one’s commitment. On the other hand, there are many levels of doctrine, many levels of understanding. And for most of us, it’s very difficult to fully comprehend the meaning of the significance of what is being said.
So to some degree or other dependent upon our level of understanding, we have to look to who is saying what is being said in terms of a fully qualified teacher, not someone like myself. But does this person emulate, embody what is being said? Do they express, is their life their way of being an expression of the teachings? And is it a type of way of life, an expression of being which you would like to emulate yourself? The type of happiness, compassion, understanding, all the self authenticating values which make life worthwhile.
Does this person seem to express them in their everyday life? And if the answer is yes, then you can begin to presume, have a trust that though you may not be able to understand fully the significance of what is being said, that it must have a very positive effect. That this person seems to be an expression of what is being said, an embodiment of what is being said. And either way, all of us are somewhere between those two possibilities. We have to develop some faith because it is through faith that we commit ourselves to a consistent choice in all the seemingly insignificant choices that confront us throughout every day of our life.
A consistent choice of the path of growth, the path which will lead us toward the inner principle of Buddha by means of the Dharma and social context of a Sangha, a spiritual community. When the mind is dynamic in its nature, it will change even if we don’t wish it to. It will change. It will change by its very nature. The direction of change can be either in terms of repetition of what has gone in the past, simply the reoccurring neurotic patterns, compulsive patterns which constitute most of our life, or it can begin to interrupt these patterns.
We can begin to introduce a negative feedback system whereby that begins to develop a spiral effect rather than a circular motion. And we even though we may be repeating, going through the same motions, it may appear that way, but there’s some direction to this repeating. It’s like a spiral. It’s actually going somewhere. And there we still appear to ourselves to be circling.
Our circling has now taken some direction. It may not be a direct line, but at least we’re going somewhere and hopefully in the direction of our choice, in the direction of our autonomously derived values, principles to realize Buddha within ourselves, to the direction of, as I call it, healthy, loving, sane human being. This becomes a primary guiding principle and setting that as a prime goal in our life. I go for refuge until I am enlightened to the Buddha, the Dharma, and the highest assembly. From the virtuous merit that I collect by practicing giving and the other perfections, may I attain the state of a Buddha to be able to benefit all sentient beings.
I go for refuge until I am enlightened to the Buddha, the Dharma, and the highest assembly. From the virtuous merit that I collect by practicing giving and the other perfections, may I attain the state of a Buddha to be able to benefit all sentient beings. I go for refuge until I am enlightened to the Buddha, the Dharma, the highest assembly. From the virtuous merit that I collect by practicing giving and the other perfections, may I attain the state of a Buddha to be able to benefit all sentient beings. We are looking at the third of the three principal aspects of the path, The three principal aspects of the path being developing the determination to be free, opening our hearts to others, and seeing deeply into the nature of reality.
In terms of seeing deeply into the nature of reality, We are moving through progressive stages in nature reality. We begin, before we actually start our training, as naive realists. That is to say, we unquestionably accept the world as it appears. The world is out there, very solid and concrete. I’m over here, very solid and concrete.
It appears that there’s no problem except the problem of suffering which we don’t associate with perhaps a mistaken notion in the way that we accept appearances. The world is full of isolated independent objects, and I’m one of those various objects in this seemingly concrete solid world. And we cling to that view. So but finally perhaps out of good fortune we experience a sense of high degree of pain, we begin to question not only we begin to question our worldview, and perhaps in a deeper fashion than we normally look into it, rather than looking at our problems on a rather superficial level, that he or she did this to me, or if I had that, I would be happier. If I could get rid of this difficulty, I wouldn’t have the pain any longer as if we could permanently remove pain and find permanent happiness in some way or another by manipulating the world around us and the things and the people therein.
Perhaps we begin to deal with our problems on a deeper level and we necessarily have to look into the very nature of the way in which we approach the world and the things about us and begin to question many of our deep held beliefs, notions, assumptions, ideas about the actual ontological status of the world, the way things are. Perhaps we’ll begin to find that we’re making some mistakes, epistemological mistakes in the sense that we’re making some mistakes in the way that we understand the world, the status of the way things exist. And this in fact is, as far as Buddhism is concerned, is the source of all our problems. Our mistaken beliefs as to ourselves and the world around us. So beginning to question, to begin to test our perceptions, beginning to question the appearance, we begin at the hearer stage in seeing deeply into the nature of reality.
We’re going to move through four stages. Hearer stage, mind only stage, autonomy middle way stage, and Consequentialist Middle Way stage. So at the initial stage of questioning, we’re at the hearer stage. And hearer accepts that the world out there very much the way it appears, it’s not like concrete. But what he or she does begin to question is the nature of the self, this I, this person who I believe myself to be, begins to analyze it and to look into it.
And he applies what is the technique that we’ve discussed called the four essentials. The essential of ascertaining the object in negation, the essential of ascertaining the pervasion, the essential of ascertaining the lack of oneness, the essential of ascertaining the lack of difference. And the hearer realizes through the application of this technique of analyzing the nature of the self that there is no singular, unchanging, independent self, though there appears to be one, that there is no self sufficient, substantially existent self, though there appears one. By means of this analysis, and by means of coming to an understanding of the actual nature of the self, that such a type of self appears, but it appears under the influence of ignorance, of distorted awareness. And therefore, though it appears, it in fact does not exist.
So he understands that the self does in fact exist, but it has parts, that it’s constantly changing, that it’s dependently existing. He understands that there is no self sufficient self, that the self is a manner of speaking, a conventionality that we make use of, that we designate to the mind and body, Jampa, I, me. In this way, he begins to remove a coarse level of ignorance, a coarse level of this distorted awareness, this reifying tendency, ego grasping tendency. The coarse level has been removed. But this analysis doesn’t go far enough.
There’s still more subtle, more deeper layers of ignorance which needs still to be removed. More and more subtle layers like the peeling away of an onion layer after layer. And so now the practitioner moves on to the mind only stage. So in the mind only stage, the practitioner begins to question the solid world out there, which was question previously. He discovers that the mind and the various objects which the mind perceives are not a different entity, that they are the same substance, that the appearance of external objects is false, and that the external objects do not truly exist.
The perceiving subject and the perceived object are the same substance. They both are the play of mind. They both arise out of the ripening of karmic seeds which are embedded upon the mind basis of all. Like the waves arising from the depths of the ocean. The movement of the waves is simply a play of the ocean.
So the ocean is like the mind basis of all. And the various objects which appear and the perceiving subjects which apprehend those objects are simply the play of the mind in the ripening effect of the karmic seeds, the dispositions which have been planted, embedded, registered on the mind basis of all. He begins to distinguish objects into those that are merely fabrications of thought, which these are called imaginary natures. And this is a review. We’ve covered all this so I’m going through this very quick review just to jog our memory a little bit.
So some of you haven’t been here so this will seem rather mysterious perhaps. But then we’re going to move on to the higher stage and we’re going to explain that in much more thorough detail. So he begins to distinguish three natures, taking all the various objects phenomena about him, those which are simply a fabrication of mind these are called imaginary natures. And then there were those which have relative existence. And these are called dependent natures.
And then there are those which have absolute existence. And these are called thoroughly established natures. So he sees that dependent nature, that is by dependent nature we mean objects which depend upon causes conditions are free of imaginary natures. That is to say, the concepts and terms which refer to them. Though we grasp an imaginary natures to be the real thing, the actual thing out there.
This is going to come up later in discussing the autonomy stage. So this absence of the imaginary nature and the dependent nature is the thoroughly established nature. That’s emptiness. That almost sound like a lot of words just kind of strung together one after another. Through this understanding, a deeper level of distorting awareness, a deeper level of ignorance is removed.
But still the analysis has not gone far enough to remove even the more subtle levels of ignorance. To do that, the practitioner now has to move on to the middle way autonomy stage. So there is within the philosophic systems of Buddhism four schools. The highest school is called the four schools being the Great Exposition School, the Sūtra School, the Mind Only School, and the Middle Way School. The highest of these four schools is the Middle Way school.
This has two divisions, the Autonomy Middle Way school and the Prāsaṇgika Madhyamaka school. So the Middle Way school has these two divisions. The term middle way, and this is used quite a lot. Here it’s used in a very, not in an ethical sense between asceticism and indulgence, but in a philosophic sense, a technical sense. The term middle way denotes a centrist position, a middle way, a center of central position, a centrist position between two extremes.
The extreme of permanence and annihilation or between, another way of saying it, between existence and true existence. Between nonexistence and true existence. Nonexistence and true existence. And what these terms mean, especially this word true existence, it’s very important that we come to an understanding of what that word implies. The essential assertion of the middle way school is that phenomena exist, but they do not truly exist.
You know, people, books, cars, houses exist, but they do not truly exist. Phenomena appear to a valid cognition. And this refutes their nonexistence. This table appears to my eye consciousness. And that refutes, it’s able to eliminate the nonexistence of table.
That is to say, it’s able to establish the existence of the table. My eye consciousness is able to establish the existence of the table. Emptiness refutes true existence. So there there are things exist, but we add onto them a way of existing which objects do not possess due to the influence of ignorance, the distorting awareness. Phenomena exist, but they’re empty of a particular fantasized way of existing, purely imaginary.
It’s completely made up. They’re empty of a particular fantasized way existing. One of these fantasized ways of existing we call true existence. There’s many different terms, and there’s different levels of fantasy which we’re involved in. But one of them, which we’ll work on work on now, is called true existence.
This is a fantasized way of existing which we project onto everything, everyone, all phenomena, always appear to us to truly exist, independent of our mind. This table appears to me to exist completely cut off, independent of my mind. That way of existing is called true existence. That table is empty. It doesn’t really exist that way, but it appears that way.
We’re gonna elaborate on this. This is the central understanding which we have to gain at the Autonomy Middle Way School. So, you know, this this fantasized way of existing, different levels. There’s one fantasized way of existing which will be discussed at the autonomy stage and more subtle, a deeper fantasized way of existing at the Consequentialist stage. So we’re going to look in terms of the autonomy stage.
So we’ve we’ve progressed to that point in trying to see deeply into the nature of reality. The assertion of true existence, and we’re gonna come back to this word again and again, true existence, and what that word means. It is the assertion of realism. And here, realism means to assume that objects and events in nature are able to define themselves. Objects and events in nature define themselves in ways that can be grasped by the human mind.
What does it mean for an object to define itself? For an object to define itself means that it is independently existent, that it exists from its own side without depending upon the mind which is grasping it. There is a world existing beyond my senses. That what I see, what I perceive is unrelated to my perception of mutually creating the objects. You know, you’re walking through the woods and you come upon a beautiful rose.
It’s as if that rose has been there all that time. It’s not dependent upon anyone conceiving it. It’s not dependent upon my knowing of it, my constructing it, my creating it, my perceiving it, my apprehending it. It seems, it appears to be independent of minds, of concepts, of terms, of names, of language, out there, concrete, objectively, existent, independent of all these mental factors. That’s the way it appears.
We know this from our own experience. We see from our own experience that phenomena are perceived, we perceive, they appear to exist independently of our perception, of our conception. So the most fundamental reason for our believing in an objective universe, in a universe which is independent of our minds, is because that’s the way the universe appears to us. It’s simply the way it appears. That’s the way it looks to us.
But if we have been learning as we have been learning or hopefully we’ve been learning that appearances cannot always be trusted. Appearances can be false. Things can appear one way and in fact exist another way. For example, the nature of the self at the hearer stage. It appears very solid concrete, but in fact it’s not.
External objects at the at the level of the mind only stage. Objects that appear to be external to the mind, but in fact they’re not. Here we’re going to question the appearance of objects as independent to mind. That’s the way they appear to us naturally without having to have been taught any philosophic systems instinctively, innately. That’s the way objects appear to us.
Cut off and at a distance out there independent of my conception, my perception. You know, we look you know, in each stage, we’ve been using a dream example. And here we can look at a dream example. A fire which appears in a dream is not really a fire. A fire which appears in a dream is not really a fire.
It doesn’t have the it doesn’t it’s not able to burn anything, in fact. It does not arise out of causes or conditions of, for example, matches in wood. It’s not really a fire. But it appears in a dream context to be a fire as if it were created out of those conditions, as if it had the potential to burn. So the mere appearance of an object does not establish its existence.
The appearance of a fire in a dream does not establish the fact that it is in fact a fire because we know it’s not. It’s a false appearance. It appears one way and exists another. It does not truly exist as a fire. It falsely exists as a fire.
It is only that appearance is only true. The appearance of being an actual fire, a real fire, is only true for a dream consciousness. For waking consciousness, it’s not a true appearance. It’s false. But it is true for a dream consciousness, and therefore we react to it as if it were really a fire.
A dream tiger appears to be really a tiger to a dream consciousness. And therefore, when we see that dream tiger in the context of a dream, we generate fear. But in fact, that tiger could not bite us. It couldn’t kill us. But that’s only in terms of awakening consciousness we able to perceive that.
It’s not truly. It’s not really a tiger. It’s only in the appearance of a tiger. All phenomena whatsoever appear to truly exist, that is to exist independent of the perceiving mind. There seems to be a objective world beyond our senses, a world out there that exists prior to our thinking about it.
We discussed at the mind only stage. Things such as books, cars, people, etcetera exist prior to our conceptualizing about them. So we’re going go back to the mind only stage for a moment and we’re going come back to the autonomy stage. So you have to put your head in mind only stage for a moment. So in the mind only stage, books, cars, people, they exist.
They do, in fact, exist in the mind only stage, exist prior to our thinking about them, prior to our conceptualizing about them. That is to say they exist prior to our giving name. These are the things in and of themselves prior to our thinking about them. You know, this is the dependent nature that I mentioned before, the thing in and of itself, the table before I think about the table, before I give it the name table, the car before I think car, long car, short car, Holden, Ford, blue car, before I give it the name car, there is a car prior to my thinking about it, prior to my giving that name. That car is the dependent nature.
Dependent because it rises in dependence upon causes and conditions. But its existence is not dependent upon the fabrications of mind. It truly exists outside, independent of my mind, independent of my thinking about it. First there’s the car, and then there’s my thoughts about the car. Or just there’s the car, and then I give the name, oh, there’s a car.
So they exist independent of the perceiving mind, just cars, people. But we project upon these already existent objects, our thoughts, about them. We project names upon these objects, terms. And we project the concept, book. We project the concept car, people, upon these already existing cars, people, books.
Upon these real cars, real people, real books, we project our concept of car, our concept of people, concept of book. The conceived book, the conceived car, the conceived person is a contrivance of mind. It is purely a fabrication of our imagination. This is the imaginary nature. And these do not truly exist.
Object before conception truly exists. It’s not dependent upon mind. But the object as it’s conceived does not truly exist because it’s a fabrication of mind. It depends upon mind. You know, I used used the expression last week, the map is not the territory.
The map is not the territory. All the little squares and circles which denote villages and towns and cities. These are symbols standing for something which is real. But we often confuse the symbols, the terms, the names, the concepts which we project onto the objects or the objects themselves. The conceived object doesn’t it’s purely imaginary.
The object in and of itself is truly existent. The conceived object is not truly existent. My conception of you about you is purely imaginary nature. It’s not truly existent. You as before I conceive of you, before I discriminate all your qualities, before I give you I put you in the various boxes, categories, and isolate you from all your causes and conditions.
That you before I’ve processed you in my imagination is truly existent, and we’re at the mind only stage. The absence so the absence of the imaginary in the dependent nature is the thoroughly established nature, that you are, in and of yourself have none of the qualities are not my conception of you. My conception of you is an imaginary nature, that you in and of yourself do not possess the imaginary nature, my conceptions of you. You in and of yourself do not possess the names that I give you, that I use to think about you. I to use my language.
I have to use words, names, in order if I want to think about you. But we often mistake our categorizations, our terms, our names, our concepts for the thing itself. But that thing itself has never had any of these concepts. It is completely free from beginningless of all our concepts, all the names, categories, which we project upon it. This absence of the imaginary in the dependent, the thing of itself, is called the thoroughly established.
This is an emptiness. Things are empty of being of their imaginary nature. But we often, but we live in a world where we hold these imaginary natures to be the things themselves, to be real. I hold my conception of you to be you, and I relate with you on that basis. This is where a great deal of problems arise.
You have never been my conception of you. You are empty of that imaginary nature. For example, another way to say this another way to say this is that that which is I was trying to think of some kind of definition for book and I just came up with a very simple one. That which is bound ordered printed pages. Ordered printed pages.
That which is bound ordered printed pages is empty of being established as a self defining basis for affixing the name book. It’s empty of being a self defining basis for the affixing of the name book. Doesn’t A self defining basis means that there’s something It naturally exists as a basis for my calling it book. Now this is the basis and I give it this name book. If it were the naturally existent basis for my giving it the name book, then whoever and whenever I saw the bound ordered printed pages, there should arise in my mind, whoever I am, even if I don’t speak English, there should arise in my my mind the name book.
Because whenever I see bound ordered printed pages, because that name abides with the book, then if I am aware of the book, if I’m aware of the bound printed pages, I must be aware of the book. And therefore then I should be aware of that name. It should arise in my mind. The name book naturally exists with the object. All of the qualities, no, this in fact doesn’t exist, all the qualities that I conceive of I hold to naturally exist with you and I relate with you on that basis.
So dependent natures such as books, cars, etcetera, exist in their own right from their own side objectively as does the emptiness of dependent natures. They’re they’re empty of depending upon the mind. Books, cars are empty depending upon the mind. Truly exist. So in the mind only, dependent natures and thoroughly established natures truly exist while imaginary natures do not truly exist.
So in the mind only, to truly exist means to exist independent of mind. To truly exist means to exist independent of mind. And then, you know, maybe a technical. What is the true existence in terms of the now we’re gonna go back to the autonomy stage. What does it mean to truly exist at the autonomy stage?
Now, you know, this nothing truly exists. But if it did if something did truly exist, what would it be like? To truly exist means to exist in the manner and this is rather maybe again, maybe quite a few technical terms strung together. Exist in the manner of a unique objective mode of subsistence without being positive through appearing to a nondefective awareness. This is a rather formal definition.
What does all that mean? At the autonomy stage, and this is the main assertion of the middle way school is in general is that nothing whatsoever truly exists. You, I, this house, car, buses, people. Nothing whatsoever truly exists. Nothing whatsoever has its own reality independent of of perceiving it, of conception, independent of terms, independent of name.
All phenomena without exception are dependent for their existence upon the apprehending mind, upon appearing to an awareness. Nothing exists outside of my awareness. There is no world apart from my awareness. What do we mean here awareness? We mean there is no world apart from the conceptualizing and labeling process of mind.
There is no world apart from the conceptualizing and labeling process of mind. There’s no world apart from my thinking about that world using languages, concepts, using terms, using names. There’s no world out there separate, apart, independent of that process of my own mind. There is no independent world out there standing apart from our own minds. It is, and this is what contemporary physics, particle physics is coming to, it is a participatory universe.
human beings are participating the construction of reality, of the universe. That there isn’t a given universe, and somehow we are simply inhabiting that given universe. And this this has it’s has far reaching ramifications in many, many ways, lots of things. human beings define the objects in the events of the world that we experience. It’s not as if the world is sort of we’re walking through sort of a museum that already was here before.
But that we are continually involved in a creative process, co related origination. So these things in the world do not truly exist independently exist. So this is not to say they do not exist at all. They, in fact, they do exist. It is to say that entities that we identify exist in relationship to us.
That which we identify, that which we come to know has only come into existence in dependence upon it being known to us. It is, as I just mentioned, a participatory universe. The universe is not simply out there waiting to be discovered, and this is what atomic particle physicists are finding, but it is continually being invented. There’s a quotation. Let us turn now to some of the alternative perspectives that have been proposed by contemporary scientists.
Recall physicist John Archibald Wheeler’s speculation that nuclei and electrons did not exist prior to the twentieth century since no one before nineteen hundred had ever saw one. Here is a radical departure from both scientific realism and instrumentalism. He seems to suggest that atomic nuclei do not exist independently in the objective world, but neither are they purely conceptual constructs having no physical reality. Rather, he implies that they were brought into existence by our conception of them. Note that the term conception has been used in both the sense of origination and cogitation.
To conceive, A child is conceived in the womb. We use we use that word in that sense, to originate. But we also use it conceive to understand, to apprehend, to cogitate. It has this dual meaning and this is perfectly fits what is being gotten at here. To know is to conceive the object.
Physicist Bernard, difficult name. Physicist Bernard d’Espagnat makes a similar point when he writes, our existence contributes to causing particles to emerge from a reality which is an indivisible whole in a phenomenal reality extended in space and time. And this some of the what do you say? Those who are on the the leading edge of particle physicists are beginning that is it is as if particles come out of nothing.
And that Our very investigation is creating these particles. And it sounds very strange to say that electrons, positrons, nuclei did not exist before the year 1900s. Well, what was the Earth made out of? So if you think about that, it kind of jolts our sense that electrons, positrons, all these subatomic particles that we think the world is built out of, constructed building blocks of our universe which looks so solid, that none of them existed before nineteen hundred. That sounds very strange, doesn’t it?
But without their having been