Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Ven Jampa Gendun opens this 46.5-minute session with a Śāntideva verse linking happiness directly to concentration, then leads a guided breath meditation before asking a pointed question: where do we actually take refuge? He argues that most people unconsciously rely on money, relationships, or a hoped-for rescuer, and that Dharma practice targets not immediate problems but the recurring mental patterns that generate them repeatedly. The session’s longest and most striking thread is the second of the four transforming thoughts — death. Gendun develops an unusually psychological reading: our real fear of death is fear of ego-dissolution, the loss of a constructed self-image, and this same fear is the hidden root of hatred. Confronting it directly, rather than suppressing it, is what makes genuine love possible.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 08 1988 03 04 3PA.mp3
UUID: 51f8bd7d-51f1-47ec-8e75-28130f208677
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: Three Principal Aspects of the Path 1988-1990 (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 1988-03-04
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 46.5 minutes
Words: ~4,980
This is a quotation by Śāntideva. When we are completely happy, all our emotional energies are unified, then we are concentrated in this true sense. Hence, we may say that a concentrated person is a happy person. A happy person is a concentrated person. And the happier we are, the longer we shall be able to stay in concentration.
We find it difficult to stay concentrated for very long because we are not happy with our present state. If we were really and truly happy, we wouldn’t need to do anything else. We would just stay still enjoying that happiness. We are not happy. We are dissatisfied.
And so we get restless and go searching for this, searching for that, for some distraction, some diversion. And in this way, there is no concentration. So a happy mind is a healthy mind, a mind dwelling in skillful states. So, you know, we’ve been talking a great deal about what meditation is and a great deal about what meditation isn’t. One way of looking at meditation is meditation is an uninterrupted production of skillful states.
Is the mind involved in its own transformation, beyond our hopes and fears, gain and loss. This process of the action of ego, dwelling in hopes and fears, gain and loss, praise and blame, these worldly dharmas, the dream of ego. So mind and meditation is seeking to go beyond that, is stepping outside the boundaries of these habitual patterns which we’re normally caught up in. So meditation creates a space for transformation to be able to take place, for our basic sanity to begin to work on our problems, for insight to rise and for love to develop. So a great deal of growth I think is very much involved with an unlearning process, not a learning process.
We probably have enough we’ve probably learned enough. But an unlearning process, it’s not that we have to achieve an open and fluid state. This is a natural state. It’s that we have to begin to unlearn our ritual patterns of attachment, of clinging, of desire. It’s not that we have to learn how to love, it’s that we have to unlearn how to hate.
So we already have these qualities more or less. Through the process of meditation, these qualities which latent are able to become manifest. The ultimate meditative state is an ego-less state. It’s what we call self validating experience in which all our positive energies, our potentials are unified, integrated. We experience them directly.
The richness is of just being. To a large degree, sitting meditation is a reorientation, a re-rooting of identity in being, away from doing and into being. Now I think we’re all very much caught up in ambition activity. Very few people can just be. And meditation is a way of re identifying with this process of simply of being.
Whatever it is, being the breath, being love, whatever the object of meditation, which is simply being rather than always doing, having to achieve the ongoing action of ego. So when we say meditation, we are referring negatively stated to the removal of the five hindrances. I talked at length about these last year: desire, hatred, sloth and torpor, doubt and indecisiveness, and anxiety and restlessness. The five hindrances, so the removal, the absence of of those five hindrances are what we might call a meditative state if put it negatively. Positively is the uninterrupted production of positive states of mind, of productive states, skillful states, the unfolding of wisdom and love, this creative unified energy.
So we’ll go ahead and meditate for a few minutes using the breath. The counting technique. I think most of you are just counting the general breath. In out one, in out two, in out three, in out four, in out five, in out and then back down to one, up to six, back down to one, up to seven, and do this up to ten. It’s natural breathing.
If you want to try another technique, can simply again, we’re going to imagine there’s a hollow tube running from your nostril up to almost the top of your head, back down in front of your spinal cord inside, and down to your navel. And we’re going to follow the breath as if it would start at the nose and came all the way down to the navel. Actually, it stops at the bottom of the lungs. We’re going to just imagine that it comes down to the navel, the level of the navel. And to help achieve mindfulness, we’re going to count.
So we just begin at the nose tip as one and halfway between the heart and the nose tip is two. Heart three, thinking to oneself. Halfway between the heart and the navel is four, and the navel is five. And as we reverse natural breathing, we begin at the navel one, two, three, four, five. One, two, three, four, five.
Also, if your mind is distracted, whatever arises during your meditation, can note it mentally. If it’s a thought, can just mentally note thinking. If you find yourself listening to something, hearing, hearing, you’re looking at something, seeing, you can When you find yourself being distracted by thoughts, can actually become a little more discriminating. And if it’s about a future plan, something you’re going to do later, Future, future, memory, memory, past, past, fantasy, fantasy, fantasy, planning, planning, It can be a little more discriminating. This is to help you develop your awareness that what your mind is actually attending to, where your mind actually is.
You’re actually emphasizing it by noting it to yourself, and then immediately bring the mind back to the breath. So it’s important to develop this determination at the beginning that immediately upon my awareness that my mind has strayed from the breath, the object of meditation, I’m going to bring it back. Not after I’ve finished the story or planned tomorrow’s menu for lunch, but immediately upon realizing I’m going to bring it back. So I’ll sit and meditate on mindfulness and breathing for a few minutes. Recite the verses of refuge To the Buddha, the Dharma and the Sangha, I go for refuge until I am enlightened.
Through the merit I create by practising the Dharma, 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. By 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, So we go for refuge to our own wisdom, clarity, truth, the methods for attaining our full potential, and to the community which support our efforts and make it all possible.
So if we don’t have a refuge, the mind goes up and down. There’s no refuge against attachment, refuge against hatred, no refuge against confusion. We simply live with whatever suffering that we’re experiencing, whatever dissatisfactions which are occurring, or we simply try to avoid the object. These are the methods that we have available to us if we don’t have a refuge. You know, we say, Oh, don’t talk about her.
I don’t want to hear about her. Or, Oh, I’m not going to that party. He’s going to be there. Everything was okay, till I lost my job, and then everything went wrong. We’re always seeking to place blame, always trying to develop the thought that we’re victims somehow.
My mommy didn’t like me when I was young. We’re constantly trying to take refuge in something. The difference between a person who practices the Dharma and a person who doesn’t is that a person who practices Dharma has some real workable method in order to alleviate his suffering and achieve the happiness that he’s seeking. It appears that either one, a non practitioner or a practitioner, does have an actual method. But I think if we all check up, we’re going to see that more or less we’re not eliminating our suffering when we don’t use a dharmic method or, that is to say, an internal method, a method of changing our attitude.
We’re simply allowing for a lapse of time to occur whereby the problem goes away of itself. Our problems are impermanent. There’s no doubt about that. Most of our problems will go away by themselves. We don’t need Dharma to get rid of our immediate problems.
That’s not the purpose of practicing an internal method of development. The problem is that these difficulties are going to arise again and again unceasingly, that we’re going to repeat the same mistakes and the same problems will occur. So when we’re practicing an internal method, practicing the Buddhadharma for example, we’re not concerned with the immediate problem. We’re concerned with the substrata, the mentality which brings up these problems in the first place. This is what we’re taking refuge from, Not particularly the pain of having broken up with your spouse, having lost your job, the petty dissatisfactions, discontentments that occur to us every day of our lives, but the general patterns, the general mistakes which bring up these difficulties in the first place.
So we have to begin to look at the nature of our suffering. You know, where what is the overall pattern rather than, getting lost in in the woods, you know, not being able to see the woods because of the trees or the forest because of the trees. We have to look, we have to get some perspective on our situation and not be able to keep continually trying to solve our problems piecemeal. One, we solve one problem, another problem arises. We solve one problem, another problem arises.
We try to see that there are patterns to our lives. And these patterns, as we’ve spoken of before, are based on mistaken belief systems, on wrong sets of ideas, on our core assumptions which are discordant with the actual nature of reality. We’re not in touch with the way things actually are, and this is the basic source of all our difficulties. And these are manifested in a peculiar and particular problem which arise to us, that arise every day of our lives. So that’s what we’re trying to work with when we’re practicing Dharma.
You will have particular sufferings. These particular sufferings are impermanent. All products are impermanent. So we don’t need the Dharma merely to get rid of this particular immediate suffering, this difficulty. What we need the dharma for is to work with our patterns of mind, which cause these types of sufferings to arise unceasingly, reoccurring over and over again unremittedly.
And then we have to begin to learn about ourselves and the way our mind is operating in order to gain control over our mind and thereby gain control over these particular problems which are arising. Why do we keep making the same mistakes again and again and again? You know, where do we go for a refuge? Where do we go for our solutions to our problems? In the Christian Bible, says, Where your treasure is, that’s where your heart is.
Where you go for your solutions to your overall problems is where your refuge is. Now you may be taking refuge in money, you may be taking refuge in your spouse, in your job, in your material possessions. You have to see, is this solving your overall problems? Money may pay your mortgage, but is it solving your overall feelings of discontent and meaninglessness, purposelessness in your life? So we have to gain some perspective on our difficulties.
So it’s the clarity of our own mind, your own wisdom, which is Buddha. You know when our minds are confused and it seems like our difficulties are are huge, hairy, solid, permanent clouds, are never going to go away. We’re completely enveloped in them, and we don’t see a a ray of sunshine. We don’t see any hole in the clouds. We think this problem is never going to go away, and we’re lost completely, confused, permanently lost.
There’s no way out. And we become paralyzed. This is limited confused mind. There’s no refuge. So the only thing you can do in such a position is hope that somebody is going to come along and solve your problems for you, which most of us are doing, whether we’re conscious of it or not.
This other person may be a white knight on a horse in shining armor riding up to you, maybe your psychiatrist, or maybe your spouse, or maybe your guru, that you’re constantly waiting for someone to take command of your life and solve your problems for you. That’s your refuge. And we die very much the same way we were born, very much as bewildered children. The Buddha said, you are your master. No one else can be your master.
By being your own master, then you’ll be liberated. So we have to become our own masters. We have to star in our own movie. We have to direct it and act in it and take control of our lives. This is going for refuge to Buddha, your own wisdom, your own clarity.
Take away the house, the husband, the children, the possessions. What is a man if all these things are removed? In himself, he is insufficient, empty, lost. So out of this emptiness of which he is afraid, he depends on property, on people, and beliefs. Fear arises out of his inner insufficiency, poverty, and emptiness.
Fear is the awareness of our inner emptiness, loneliness, and poverty, and not being able to do anything about it. So our question is, how is one to go beyond this emptiness, this loneliness, not how is one to be self sufficient, not how is one to camouflage this emptiness permanently. We go for refuge to the Dharma. We can think of Dharma in various ways, in the various techniques, the methods, practice whereby we can actualize our potential, develop our wisdom, our Buddhanature. We can simply say it’s the truth, our reality, the way things actually are.
Simply seeing how things are, not how we would like them to be, not how we would desire them to be, not how we remember them to be, but how they are at this very present moment. The Buddha said, Buddhists do not wash away sins with water, nor do they remove sufferings with their hands, nor do they transfer their realizations to the minds of others. But by their showing of the truth, all will be made free. This is all Buddha can do. He shows what reality is.
He stepped outside the fantasy world of ego, and he’s simply pointing and saying, This is the way things actually are. If you get in touch with it, you too can transcend your problems and your difficulties. There’s a quotation by the founder of a type of psychotherapy. It’s called rational emotive therapy. It says, I think that practically the whole human race is out of its goddamn mind and could use therapy.
All are biologically prone to think crookedly. All humans somewhat oh, I can’t read my own writing. All humans are somewhat nutty because they refuse pig headedly to accept reality, and therefore they make themselves depressed, anxious and enraged. We don’t accept reality. Want reality to be something other than it is.
We want to be the world as we would like it to be. We don’t think it’s quite fair that we should suffer, and we don’t think it’s quite fair that we should die, that we shouldn’t be happy all the time, that we should have to work, that we should have to discipline ourselves. That’s the way perhaps reality actually is, and without accepting that, we’re going to continue in our discontentment and our dissatisfaction. The purpose of going for refuge to the Dharma is simply trying to get in touch with the reality, the truth. The truth will make you free.
So if there’s ignorance, there must be wisdom. We can’t have ignorance without wisdom. If there’s confusion, there must be clarity. These are two sides of the same coin. We can’t have one without the other.
Therefore, when we’re aware of our confusion, we can know there must be clarity there. If there’s confusion, there must be clarity. There’s when we become aware of our own ignorance, then we can understand there must be wisdom there. We go refuge to our own potential to develop that wisdom and that clarity within our own mind to solve our own problems. And we go for refuge to the spiritual community, the Sangha.
Anybody who has some inner understanding, who is on a right path, is Sangha, spiritual community. No matter what they might look like, no matter what they might wear, no matter what job they had not have or might not have, if there is wisdom and a right path, then they can help you if they’re worthy of refuge. So we have to we have to developing clear wisdom, making use of clear methods, putting your body, speech and mind in a clear path, and being open open to the help of others who have developed some clarity in their own lives. This way we can cut through our confusion. We can find a way, and this becomes a real refuge.
We can really solve our problems in this way. We have to remember through the ups and downs of our daily life what is important. Then your way, I think, is clear. You you you become boss. You’re not lost.
You’re not you’re not overwhelmed by the world. Always returning to to the understanding of what is important and what is a real refuge. And you reach a point, I think, at some time when you can begin to forget all about yourself, at least partly, partially. You forget about your path, your happiness, your liberation, and you start to become a refuge for others. We’re talking about the three principal aspects of the path, by Tsongkhapa.
Developing the determination to be free, opening to others, and seeing into the nature of reality, seeing the way things actually are. We’re reviewing the first of the three principal aspects. We’re reviewing how methods to determine to develop the determination to be free. Usually we employ what are called the four reminders or the four transforming thoughts. These entail four meditations, ways of training the mind.
First, have to become aware of our potential and begin to appreciate the opportunity, the chance we have to actualize that potential. We talked about this somewhat last week in our review. The second is that this chance, this opportunity isn’t going to last forever. It’s definitely that we’re going to die, so we have to take up the problem of death. We have to confront the issue of our mortality.
Then third is the law of cause and effect, karma, and then the nature of our dissatisfaction, the nature of our suffering. We’re going to take up the second of those transforming thoughts briefly. It is confronting death. Death is not the last taboo, but it is a very modern one. In this era of demystification, death becomes perverse and more mysterious, more terrible than ever before.
We need to have death back again. Its transcendence puts banalities, emptiness, frustrations, vanities, and some kinds of love in their places. Contemplation of terminal issues is not in the least morbid but life enhancing. So remembrance, the mindfulness of death leads to a mindfulness of life, remembrance of life. As we mentioned last week, if we can die gracefully, we can live gracefully.
We begin to appreciate the fact of our life. The Buddha said that among all mindfulnesses, whether it’s mindfulness of emptiness, selflessness, mindfulness of impermanence, of compassion. Among all the various mindfulnesses, it is death which is the greatest mindfulness. And if we think about it, you know, we were talking about the refuge and trying to remember what is important. One thing which will help us is simply to remember we’re going to die.
And I think every time you apply for overtime, you a chance to work overtime, you remember you’re going to die. How much is your life worth? How much I remember once in Nepal, a friend of mine’s father came to visit and he was about fifty five and he had retired. We were talking, said, Oh, I had everything. I had a boat, and I had two cars, a sports car, a beautiful house.
I had everything I wanted, but I traded my life for it. And he quit it all. He saw what was happening. But he said, I traded twenty five years of my life, and how much is your life worth to you? When you remember death, you remember how much your life is worth.
And we need to develop a level of living, a standard of living, is comfortable, where we can have a cheerful home, comfortable, where we have clothes which we find comfortable, fashionable, which we enjoy wearing, good nutritious food. But there is a level which is purely in the realm of status, which is purely in the realm of pride, ego, which more or less brings no real source of happiness, is of no benefit to us, but in fact detracts from our life because it takes up our life, it takes up our time, it takes up our mental energy. And by remembering death, we can begin to be less willing to give up parts of our actual time in life, parts of our mental energy in acquiring and possessing and holding on to these, you know, all these various objects which usually take up all our time and energy. And various pursuits which may not be worth that in the light of death, probably aren’t worth it. There may be even certain types of attachments which we call love.
Somehow I think remembering death can improve the quality of our life. We’re going to put more energy, more consideration of what we’re doing into our life. We get that much more out of it. Most of us fear death and we have to get in touch with our fear of death. This is what’s going to energize us.
We talk about these reoccurring compulsive patterns of ego, which we’re stuck in. It was just like ruts on a road. We’re very much stuck in. To break even a simple habit takes quite a bit of energy. It takes a lot of motivation.
In order to break out of these reoccurring patterns, have to create some space, gain perspective. We have to energize ourselves. So these are the various methods that we’re employing here to energize ourselves, is simply the determination to be free. And one of these is the fear of death. Fear can become an ally.
Death can become an ally. I think Don Juan talks about that, making death your ally. Most of us fear death, we usually fear it for the wrong reason, for a mistaken reason. It’s not that death could possibly be a prelude that will involve something coming after. It’s the terrible prospect of losing everything that we have, losing everything that we’ve worked so hard to gain, that you’ve just achieved everything you wanted, that you’re about to achieve everything you wanted, or you’ve got an idea how to go about achieving everything you wanted, and now life is going to take it all away if you know it’s so unfair.
We’re about to achieve our goals where we’ve just gotten our goals, and now it’s all taken away from you. It’s too much to bear, in a way. Even those who commit suicide fear death. It’s just that life was more miserable than fear of death. There’s a Negro spiritual, which has a line in it, I’m tired of living but I’m afraid of dying, which is a terrible position to be Such a type of fear of death is a facet of the will to maintain a separate, independent identity, the urge for separation, for permanency, some kind of unchanging existence, securing the ego in space and time where we don’t want to give this up.
So there’s this fear of this loss of identity of who we think we are. These various patterns that we’ve created, this grasping, clinging habitual patterns, as a separate permanent ego identity gives rise to this fear of death, to the fear of psychological death. Each of us has historically embraced some sort of identity, some sort of self image. And we’ve become completely identified with that imagery we’ve developed, who we think we are. So in this way, can see that ultimately insight into selflessness, egolessness, is going to cut through this very fear of the death of this particular ego image, this identity.
So with respect to this fear, within the sphere of ego, it’s impossible to annihilate this fear of death because it is situated within the ego itself, its own death, at the fear of its own death. And so such a fear can never be transcended without the understanding of selflessness. And the fear of the death which is an annihilation. It’s finished. It’s all over.
There’s no more. The end of our personal happiness. But people are trying to tell us, it’s okay. Relax. Have a good death.
Over the past few years, several books have been written purporting to advise hospital staff how to manage geriatric patients in their terminal phase. That is, the experts in this field feel that patients should be taught how to face death gracefully. All of which is, of course, sadly beside the point. One cannot just put the matter right by rationalizations, by comforting, sympathizing, which which are merely ways of gilding the lily and amount only to saying, Relax, death and dying are not so bad after all. People simply will not relax because after a lifetime of thoughtlessness in a matter, there is no release of deep seated conflicts and fears.
Moreover, deep down, the patient knows jolly well that his mentor does not know what he is talking about since he has not got to face death in the here and now. It is in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, he said that cowards die many times before their death. Cowards are ordinary people who run from the prospects of death, from the prospects of annihilation, who are not going to confront that this is the reality of this situation? It may be unfortunate.
It may be sad, but it’s normal. It’s the way things are. All that is born must die. And we live a life of fear. The essence of fear, the essence of being a coward, is not being willing to confront our fears.
The essence of cowardice is not confronting our fears. But even though if we don’t confront them, we may not even recognize them, still they’re controlling our lives. They’re influencing our thinking, our acting. Why is it we strike out with anger when someone threatens our self image. Hatred is associated with fear.
It’s like its brother. We completely identify with the self image. When the self image is threatened and fear arises and hatred arises, this self image of who we think we are. In a very simple fashion, in each day of our lives, we’re confronted with the fear of death, when we’re confronted with threat of our self image, of our conception of who we think we are, when someone begins to detract from it, when somebody puts us down, we react with fear, the loss of this self image, this conception of who you are. Through this fear, we react with hate.
So when there’s this fear, there can be no love. What did they say in the Christian bible? It says, perfect love casts out fear. By going beyond fear, we can actually love. But as long as this fear is there, we’re going to exist in hate.
And this fear is the fear of death, of our psychological death, of the loss of our identity, of who we think we are. So we have to begin to confront this very fear of the fear of psychological death. I’m talking about two types of fears. This fear that we’re always involved in is experiences anxiety, dread, depression. And we sometimes quite often wonder, why am I depressed?
I can’t see any reason. Why do I feel anxious? What’s wrong? It’s the fear of death. It’s an unreasonable fear.
And unless we face it, we’re never going to understand how unreasonable it is because it’s based on grasping and clinging to the ego, to illusory self, which in fact has no existence outside of the context of our, what we called, past mistaken epistemological errors. That means our mistaken ways of thinking. Outside of these mistaken beliefs that we have, the ego has no valid existence. But unless we confront our fears, confront who we actually are, then we’re never going to be able to transcend these fears, go beyond them. We’re talking about fear.
Going for refuge, there are said to be two causes. There’s the fear of suffering, and the faith that the objects of refuge have the ability to protect you from that fear, from that suffering. In order to develop actual refuge, we have to get in contact with our fear rather than hiding from them or suppressing them, rather than trying to overcome them even. We just want to omit our fear. So unless we admit our fears, then we’re going to simply perpetuate them.