Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. A hospital waiting room — your child’s life hanging on surgery, the surgeon emerging with good news — opens this 44-minute session as Ven Jampa Gendun uses that moment of instinctive gratitude to show how recognizing others’ kindness can be extended to every ordinary benefit. He moves through interdependency and the dissolution of self-imposed isolation, then into a sustained examination of self-worth: why many carry a felt sense of unlovability, why ego-based love fluctuates endlessly, and why psychological self-improvement stays trapped in dualism. Drawing on Buddhist, Christian, and philosophical sources, he argues that identifying with Buddha nature offers more stable ground than endlessly rebuilding self-image. The session closes with a guided loving-kindness meditation progressing from self through a liked person, a neutral person, and a difficult person, outward to all beings.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 08 3 PA 1988 07 29.mp3
UUID: 61a6e14e-ef2c-4f9b-a1f2-039801104e69
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: Three Principal Aspects of the Path 1988-1990 (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 1988-07-29
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 43.8 minutes
Words: ~4,292
It’s very sick and you take it to the hospital and it has to have an operation. And you’re sitting out in the in the waiting room. You’re you’re completely extremely worried about your child. And the doctor and the surgeon comes out of the operating room. He comes up to you and he smiles and said, the operation went well.
Everything’s your child’s going to be well. It’s going to be okay. And what do you what do you feel at that moment other than the general feeling of relief, but specifically towards that doctor? And what is what is your natural response? Isn’t there a feeling of thankfulness or gratitude?
You know he’s going to send you a bill next week. The hospital is going to send you a bill next week. You could think that, but the natural immediate response is, Thank God that he took the time to be trained, to develop the skills, to be able to save my son’s life, my child’s life. You know, isn’t it wonderful that we’ve had all these facilities with all the, you know, the people contributing? This is where your attention would be directed at that moment.
We would be focused upon the great kindness that these people are showing, the great benefit that we are deriving from this doctor, this hospital, this nursing staff. We wouldn’t be thinking at that moment they’re all doing it to make money, which in fact maybe they are, but that doesn’t make any difference. We can choose to focus on that what we want. We can drive whatever attitude. We can develop whatever attitude toward the same situation, which is going to be most profitable for us, which is going to bring the maximum benefit to the quality of our life.
So this is what we’re doing here. It may be a fact that they’re going to send you a big bill, you know, probably will. And you may you may, you know, when you see the bill you may slap your head on your forehead. But then the immediate response, immediate attitude that you take is a thanksgiving, a gratitude. And this is the attitude we’re trying to develop toward even the mundane benefits that we’re being shown every day of our life.
Even in the minutest ordinary activities and benefits like clothing, this building, you know, the warmth on the heater. And you can see this is a rather pragmatic way to approach your life. It has some skillful means involved in it. Some real way to develop an intensity of the quality of your life that you begin to see everyone is kind, you appreciate people, and everyone becomes very pleasant and a feeling of closeness. And these are values which I think promote the qualities of life that we’re all looking for.
So why not try in some sort of way, to instigate this new way, new types of attitude, new ways of focusing upon the same situations? This is what Buddhism is saying, you know, new approaches, perhaps the old approaches aren’t working so well. Maybe we can try something new. You know, this way we can begin to dissolve the self imposed isolation that we constantly feel. We get a sense in a very positive way of the interdependency in all sentient beings, that we’re very much a part of some of a greater organism called life.
And this is an awareness of spiritual ecology, that we’re part of something much greater, an integral part of it all. And we begin to appreciate ourselves and the part that we play in it, and we appreciate everything that’s around us because we’re a part of all that. We’re not isolated from all that. So we begin to develop a sense of not only our mother’s kindness, the primordial bond which has existed somewhere within the recesses of our mind, and begin to direct this mentality toward all sentient beings, and since they’ve all been our mothers, but the general sense of the kindness of all sentient beings. We begin to like people.
We begin to develop a willingness to work for their benefit, to dedicate ourselves in some small way for them. And we develop a sense of wish to repay their kindness. So this this wish to repay kindness isn’t a banker’s mentality of credits and debits. You know, we aren’t keeping, you you scratch my back and I’ll scratch your back kind of thing. Like we have some kind of repayment plan where we’ve got worked out.
But it’s this natural response to a feeling of being benefited, you know, just like this natural response you feel to this doctor, for example. You know, we begin to it’s a feeling of richness that everyone’s been benefited. You know, we become rich people. You know, this is very much the necessary quality that we have to develop, is the feeling that we aren’t poverty stricken, that we aren’t insufficient, that we aren’t we have to get over this feeling of self pity, that we are very rich, We can afford to be generous with our materials, but more importantly with our love and our kindness and our time. You know, we’ve been we’ve been very enriched by others, so we can be generous.
And this is this generosity which seeks to repay the kindness of others, the feeling I can repay, and I wish to repay. So we get in contact, and we make some contact with others, and we feel rich, and we develop a very deep feeling to return the kindness that all sentient beings have shown us, have given us. You know, there must be something alright about us. You know, we’ve been shown unimaginable loving kindness, unconditioned love, concern by our mothers. And we become aware of the kindness and the benefit that others show us in general.
So we must be okay for others to think it’s that worthwhile, for our mother to think it’s that worthwhile, that we’re worthy of being loved. Despite our very existence, we don’t have to earn it. We didn’t earn any of this. You know, up to now we haven’t really noticed neither others love, you know, or others’ kindnesses, you know, that in fact that we’re worthwhile, that we’re worthy, that we’re worthy of being loved. You know, we’ve always carried around this feeling of insufficiency, self pity, unworthiness.
You have never quite been able to love because of never having felt loved and then never being able to love ourselves. So, you know, I quite often read from quotes from Christian sources. So, you know, when I use the word God, we don’t generally use that term in Buddhism. But I think we can translate it in our own minds. Find some If there is a parallel or some analogy within Buddhism or transfer the meaning, translate it into Buddhism.
I find it meaningful for my own practice, my own thinking to make use of, you know, whatever what I think is wisdom wherever I find it, whether it’s it’s been labeled Christian or atheist, it doesn’t matter. So when I use these Christian quotes/teachings, hope you can translate them in some in some way to into some something meaningful for you. One of the keys to real religious experience is the shattering realization that no matter how hateful we are to ourselves, we are not hateful to God. This realization helps us to understand the difference between our love and his. Our love is a need, it is a gift.
We need to see good in ourselves in order to love ourselves. He does not. He loves us not because we are good, but because he is. You know, why does our mother love us? Is it because we’re good?
You know, when we were just just came out of the womb or while we’re still in the womb. Is it because we were? So to to open ourselves to others, which is the direction that this meditation is taking us, this technique, this system, To open ourselves to others is as much to open ourselves to the love of others for us, to become to create the space of being able to feel loved. To open ourselves to others is as much to open ourselves to the love of others for us as it is to get in touch and to express our own love for others. You know, we all have a concept of who we are.
You know, every Friday night when we go through loving kindness meditation I say, Whatever identity you may hold to, whatever concept you may have of yourself, you can change. So we all have some model of who we are. Usually it’s a rather limited negative model. And part of this, you know, this complex self image that we have is this feeling of unlovability. And with this feeling, no matter how much others may love you, in fact, you can never quite feel loved.
This is the reflection of your own state of mind, and you can carry this around the rest of your life when in fact, you know, it may be raining love on you, but like on a duck’s back, none of it can soak in. So this opening to others is also an opening to the feeling that we’re worthy of being loved, that we’re loved, that we’re being benefited, that someone has loved us. By seeking to love others, we we become aware of just how much we ourselves have been loved and are being loved. It’s all very much reflection, you know, what we see out there and what’s happening here. A great deal of thought and time, energy is given over to finding love.
But as long as finding love is an issue, we will never find it. It is much more important to love than to be loved. And if one loves in the true sense of the word, then whether or not one is loved is no longer even an issue. In fact, so long as it is an issue, one is incapable of loving. You know, here, you know, by love, I don’t mean the love of love and hate, love.
You know, with the the love of which is in the boundaries of ego. You know, the the type of love, the earned love, our momentary quiescence, quieting of our self hatred and our self shame. You know, the moment that we feel that we are good enough to be lovable, that we can be loved, not this type of love. You know, at these moments when we feel, oh, I’ve earned the right to be loved, you know, however you may conceive of that, what it takes for you at that particular time. And then you project some kind of twisted love upon others, know, others only become a mirror for our own narcissism, our own self love.
You know, generally we see people as objects, as bodies, as forms, you know, when you see person. But essentially, beings, humans are feeling beings. You know, we wish to experience pleasure, we wish to be happy. And this is what we mean by love, the wish to be happy. So in a way, we’ve always loved ourselves as we’ve always wished ourselves to be happy.
You know, but this type of love, it’s, an unconditioned love, which isn’t based on a self hate, the dualism of the ego. A healthy self love is perverted by self-cherishing. In a way, stubbornly refuse to acknowledge the fact that others want to be happy just like myself. And so in this way, others become simply an object for our use in order to bring ourselves happiness. And this is the essence of self-cherishing.
We persistently refuse to recognize the fact that others want to be happy. But instead we exploit them for our own welfare and our our loves becomes a self centered kind of love, which which is to say it’s not really any kind of love at all. So as long as we don’t feel some intrinsic worth of being loved, we will never feel we will only feel this love of this love hate, This still not unconditioned love. But this is a relative love which fluctuates back and forth between our self hatred and our self love. Usually it’s going back somewhere in the middle.
And we’re always going to be in conflict with ourselves and always in conflict with others. For man to be alive, he must exercise not only the acts that belong to vegetative and animal life. He must not only subsist, grow, be sentient, not only move himself around, feed himself and the rest, he must carry on activities proper to his own specifically human kind of life. He must, that is to say, think intelligently. And above all, he must direct his actions by free decisions made in the light of his own thinking.
These decisions moreover must tend to his own intellectual, moral and spiritual growth. They must tend to make him more aware of his capacities for knowledge and for free action. They must expand and extend his power to love others and to dedicate himself to their good, for it is in this that he finds his own fulfillment. This quality of dedicating ourselves to the good of others, you know, is within us all. It is simply what we are calling a mother’s love.
A mother dedicates herself, at least for a short amount of time, a period of time, to the to the welfare, to the good of her baby, even before it’s born. So we’ve all received this love, we’ve all given this type of love an infinite number of times before. And as I’ve said, you know, the world is very much a reflection of our own mind, the quality and the state of our own mind. What we see outside is very much a mirrored reflection of our own mind. There’s a there’s a a verse.
A depthless blue sky and autumn woods, I had forgotten how beautiful my mind can be. You know, for a person who has no desire, there are no thieves. So by consciously cultivating this unconditioned love that we want to receive by getting in contact with it, the emotional experience of having been unconditionally loved at one time. Becoming aware, cultivating the awareness of the kindness of others. And we become aware of our own ability to give unconditioned love, and we become kinder.
And what you see on the outside is what is on the inside. If you see unconditioned love being directed towards you, that means there must be some unconditioned love within you which you’re able to give. If you see others as kind, as beautiful, as pleasant, then not only that, you become beautiful, kind, pleasant, and you express these qualities. You know, we have attitudes, and our attitudes become expressed in the way we relate, and the way we relate determines our experience. Reality is not objectively existent.
Our experience reinforces our attitudes. Now we’re caught up in a very negative cycle. We have negative attitudes by which we relate with reality in a very negative way, and we experience a negative reality. We have negative experiences, and this simply reinforces our preconceived attitudes. It’s a self defeating cycle, so we have to begin to break out of this.
The way we can begin to break out of this is to develop more skillful attitudes. These are going to change the way we relate, they’re going to change our experiences, and this is going to reinforce even more skillful attitudes. And these are skillful attitudes. You know, getting in touch with the loving kindness of our mother, the unconditioned love. Getting in touch, becoming aware of the kindness of others.
These attitudes are going to change the way we relate to others. They’re going to change the way we experience others. And this in turn, we’re going to find that we’re loved, that we’re going to see more and more the kindness of others because others are going to be more kind. Others are going to love us more, and we’re going to become more and more aware of that, changing our attitude even more. So, you know, these days there’s a great deal of talk about, you know, growth courses and especially self esteem for example that, you know, we all need self esteem.
I agree. We all we all need self esteem. We all need some positive self image. There’s no doubt. It would You know, we have to feel good about ourselves, to like ourselves.
But we have to remember that that this is at best a remedial process. It still lies within the dualistic conceptions of ego. Dualistic construct of ego. You know, you made you may focus upon more and more of your good qualities to the exclusion of your bad qualities, and you begin to develop a better self image. But what happens in this process as you begin to lose sight of the person, this bad person that you once were?
Then what then you have to begin to your your present goodness isn’t quite as good as it was before, but it’s it’s only good in relationship to how how bad you were before. And as you lose sight of how bad you were before, this goodness that you now feel toward yourself becomes a little less good. It’s not quite as strong as it was. So again, we have to struggle to develop feelings of what even better. This constant struggle, endless having to promote our welfare, creating again and again reestablishing our credentials, reestablishing why we’re such a good person, again refocusing our attention.
So it’s a constant struggle, reestablishing our goodness. So the realm You know, we could talk in general about the realm of psychology. Essentially, you know, there are areas where they seem to like in transpersonal psychology, etcetera. You know, but in general, the realm of psychology is the realm of ego, of duality, you know, of the relative. The constant resolution of reoccurring conflicts.
The realm of the spiritual is the absolute beyond ego, beyond dualism, beyond the relative, beyond conception. It represents the final dissolutions of all conflict, so it represents peace. In this process of developing ourselves spiritually, we can combine this with the psychological methods of developing, for example, a better self image, more self esteem, beginning to focus on our good qualities. But additionally, we have to make effort at the skillful means of identifying with those factors which are outside of the duality, which are unconditioned, for example, our Buddha nature. You know, how much more self esteem could you want to think, I’m in the nature of a Buddha?
But that’s difficult to come to, to actually feel that to the depth of your very being. So we have to approach it slowly and just think, well, I’m not a bad person, you know, we work our way there. But at the same time, as you’re trying to find out that you’re not such a bad person, you can begin to work on the fact that you’re of Buddha nature, that you’re in the image of God. You know, that we aren’t the limited negative, unworthy, insufficient person that we conceive of ourselves usually, we’re divine beings, but we don’t recognize it. And we can try to understand, you know, rather than this love hate quality of the emotional states of the ego, Yet there’s an unconditioned type of love, which is beyond the shifting situations of personality, of self concern, of self gratification.
We try to understand that, you know, we can can never earn this type of love. We can never be make ourselves worthy of it, deserving of it, because we already are. Just by the fact of our existence, we are worthy of love. We don’t have to earn it, that we don’t have to make ourselves likable, lovable, intrinsically worthy of being loved just by our very existence. So understanding this, understanding who we are and appreciating ourselves, this understanding and appreciation is expressed as love and compassion.
And this is the heart of all spiritual practice. This is by Albert Einstein. A human being is part of a whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separate from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us.
Our task must be free ourselves from the prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty. All of the eighty four thousand teachings of the Buddha are help us are to help us develop wise hearts and loving minds. You need to develop a worldview which is in harmony with the world. So all these various meditations, these techniques that we’re that we’re going through are a way of opening our hearts and minds to a new way of looking at the world, a new approach to the world, a way of transforming our attitudes, and therefore, a way of transforming our world. So let’s stop there.
So we meditate on loving kindness. Consider your own difficulties your dissatisfaction, and the fact that you want to be happy. Whatever you may have done in the past, whatever mistakes you may have created, you can forgive yourself. Simply regret them and as best you can, not to repeat them again in the future. You can begin again.
And however you may conceive of yourself, whatever identity you may hold to, you can change. You can become any anyone that you want to be. For the moment, we have to make friends with ourselves, be gentle with ourselves, have love and compassion for ourselves, and wish ourselves well. Direct positive feelings towards yourself. Wish yourself happiness.
You’re of your own self love of wishing yourself happiness. May I be happy. May I grow and not suffer. Wish good things for yourself. And think of someone that you you like, that you love, someone of the same sex, and imagine that person in front of you.
Just feel as if that person is there. Remember all the good times that you’ve shared, all the happiness, all the kindness that this person has shown you. Begin to direct natural feelings of caring, wishing of happiness that arise when you think of this person. Just radiate out good feelings, positive feelings towards this person. Now think of someone you neither like nor dislike, someone you feel indifferent toward.
Imagine that person in front of you. And try to go beneath the superficial appearances that we usually judge people by, that we usually cling to, whether they’re male, female, rich or poor, ugly, beautiful, educated, uneducated. Try to look beneath all of those superficial qualities to the essence of that person. If someone there wants to be happy and doesn’t want to suffer just like yourself. Begin to radiate out some positive feelings towards this person because it’s very much a reflection about how our own attitude towards ourselves, how we relate, how we feel about that essential person who’s just like ourselves.
Direct good feelings, warm feelings. I think of someone who you have problems with, someone who disturbs your mind, someone you don’t like. Imagine that person in front of you. This person wants to be happy and doesn’t want to suffer just like yourself, no different. And perhaps their methods of finding their happiness, eliminating their suffering has come in conflict with your methods.
It’s just a conflict of self interest. You’ve hurt others either intentionally or unintentionally in the past to find the happiness that you were looking for. And this person has done the same to you. Just as we have to forgive ourselves for the mistakes that we’ve made in the past, we have to begin to forgive this person. So set aside your grudge, your hurt, your anger, and try to see someone very much like yourself, someone who’s trying the best they can to get some happiness out of life, very confused about how to go about it and making many mistakes along the way, and wish them happiness just as you would wish your own self happiness.
Imagine these four people together, yourself and these three others, and try to see them from the point of view that they’re all equal and wanting to be happy and not wanting to suffer. From this point of view, exactly the same. And without any fumes of bias, radiate out warm caring feelings wishing happiness to all four equally. And all the people in this room, taking responsibility for their happiness, for their lives, We’re all sharing a journey, a search. Wish everyone in the room success.
They all find what they’re looking for. Generate radiate out warm feelings, positive feelings to everyone in the room. You know, everyone on the block, cooking, eating, sleeping, watching the television, all these actions they’re doing in order to find happiness. Radiate out some positive feelings and wishing that they find this happiness that they’re looking for, touching everyone on the block. Extending out further and further to all of Adelaide, all the people in their cars and buses, on the streets, in their home.