Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Ven Jampa Gendun opens this 47-minute session with a frank admission: many people find it difficult to use their own mother as the model for universal kindness, and he offers a practical workaround. The bulk of the talk works through steps one through five of the Seven Causes and Effect method for developing compassion. A passage from British psychiatrist R.D. Laing anchors the key insight — that being loved before we could do anything to earn it is the deepest available experience of self-worth, and reconnecting with that feeling is what makes the practice real rather than rote. Gendun then traces how this recognition leads to repaying kindness, seeing strangers and enemies as benefactors (the Dalai Lama’s example of the Chinese is cited), and developing unconditional positive regard grounded in Buddha nature. The session closes with a guided character meditation inviting participants to imaginatively inhabit admired qualities, transform personal flaws, and envision the person they hope to become in five years.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 08 3 PA 1989 03 03.mp3
UUID: 3616459c-0f44-4fdc-a508-7587ecabd47b
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: Three Principal Aspects of the Path 1988-1990 (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 1989-03-03
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 46.9 minutes
Words: ~5,611
In past and future rebirths, in the Seven Causes and Effect method, it’s necessary to have some conviction. Since in this first step, seeing that all sentient beings have been your mother, we must become convinced very profoundly that every sentient being has literally, you know, at one time been your mother in some past lifetime. That there has not been one place which you have not been born, there’s not been one person who at some time, you know, has not been your, in fact, your mother. And this is very difficult, isn’t it? So we have to have some confidence, some conviction in rebirths in order to come to a firm, you know, if this if this process of meditation is actually going to work.
Gaining an understanding that all sentient beings have been your mother, just like the mother of this life. Some at some time in the past, an infinite number of times. And dependence upon that, we begin to remember the kindness of mothers. And not not only with all of these sentient beings your mother, but in fact they were extremely kind just like the kindness just like the mother of this life. Right?
You know, obviously not obviously. Many people they don’t like their mother. So again we have a problem though with if we find some difficulty relating with our mother, using our mother as an example. One thing is we can begin to work with this feeling, we probably should work with it. And secondly is if we can’t work with it at all, if it just doesn’t work, we can choose another model.
You know, we can someone that you do like, you do care a great deal about, that has helped you in the past, that that has benefited you a great deal. We can take that as our model of all sentient beings. Since all sentient beings have been have related to you in that way probably in the past at some time or other. So we you know, rather than using the mother as a model of the most profound type of way of relating with another human being, with another being in general, you you can use another type of model. You know, you know, coming to a feeling, you know, this is very much a you know, meditation is very much, as I’ve said, finding the keys and opening up our mind, opening up the the potential within our mind.
And some of these are really they aren’t intellectual exercises. They aren’t merely a recitation of repeating words or phrases. They’re actually finding ways to open up reservoirs of, in this case, their profound emotions, the the the quality of the feelings that you may have experienced with your mother, which you presently aren’t able to remember, the quality of the of the bonding experience which takes place at after birth, immediate after birth. The quality of of of the experience of when you your mother held you at her breast and, you know, your whole your entire world was her. That it wasn’t two worlds.
It wasn’t you and your mother, that there was there wasn’t even the thought that of a separation from your mother. This this you know, probably for ordinary people, this feeling of of of psychological unity with another human being. It’s probably the most blissful experience that we can experience as ordinary beings. And this was the experience perhaps you might have felt, I don’t know, when your mother, you know, took you to her breast and you felt the the warmth of her of her, you know, her her very body, you know, flowing within you. That you know, trying to actually get in touch with these kind of feelings.
Many people they don’t want to get in touch with these types of feelings. They there’s a fear. You know, there’s a fear of beginning to perhaps get in touch with the actual love that the actual feelings you may have toward your mother, that you may feel what? Intimidated. You may feel an obligation.
You know, in within especially within the next cause is repaying the kindness of our mother. That is to say, there is there’s felt a great not an obligation to repay kindness, but not from the sense of a banker’s mentality, not simply since, you you scratch my back, well, I guess I have to scratch your back. It’s experiential in the sense that when someone is kind to you, there’s a sense of wanting to repay kindness. Not that I not for anything of any kind of moral notion, ethical notion, not for any type of that is you should do it, but simply there’s a there’s a opening of a heart and to the kindness of others, and there’s a, you know, there’s a feeling of wanting to share in that kindness, giving some of your kind that kindness back. And how we repay this kindness is very much up to us.
So even though from the perspective of this meditation tradition that in fact we may have an obligation to our mother, to our parents, for her kindness, but how we repay that kindness is very much our decision. But perhaps there is some kindness to be paid back. But the way we pay back that kindness is our choice, and we can determine that for ourselves. So in this sense, perhaps there’s no real nothing really great to be feared since you can read you can maintain your autonomy, you know, if you like, but and still repay the great kindness of your mother. Again, maybe there’s a necessity.
You know, the love. You know, again, many of you have said to me that a few of you said that you don’t love your mother. Okay. But there was a time when you were completely defenseless, completely helpless. There was a time when you would have died.
And this is I mean, and especially human beings, they require a great deal of attention for, what, at least maybe two or three years. Without other people intervening, they’ll die. This is the quality of our karma, if you like, that we we we require some caring. Now whether we call this kindness or not, the fact is we would have died without some someone looking after us. That some way, you know, that our very existence is valuable.
You know, that generally when we talk about loving another person, when we in a in a Western sense, people as in it’s as if people have to and also in terms of loving ourselves, we have to you know, when do we actually allow ourselves to love ourselves? You know, we have some standard that we have to live up to. You know, when I’m when I’m achieving to the to the standard that I’ve the the that I’ve set for myself, then I’m okay. Then I can I can allow myself to love myself? Something like this.
And also, we set the same standards for others, don’t we? That we don’t we find it very difficult to love ourselves simply because we exist, simply because we are, that we that we don’t to value things in ourselves for themselves and not for what they can do, not for what we might be able to get out of them. And the and the very fact and the the real situation is that someone loved us, not for anything we could have done to deserve that love. There’s no way that you could have earned the discomfort that your mother went through during her pregnancy, during birth, during the first few years of your life. You know, feeding you, constantly taking care of you, worrying about you, cleaning cleaning you up.
That constant care. There’s no way that you could have earned that, that you could have made a deal and assigned a contract. I’ll take care of you later on if you do this for me now. That by your own very being that you were held as valuable in yourself, that you were loved, not for anything that you could have given consciously, but just by your own being that someone loved you. And that perhaps we can if we are willing to get in touch with that feeling that someone else had for us, maybe that we can we can extend that to ourselves and how we value ourselves.
And therefore, you know, we can begin to just value ourselves because we deserve to be happy, because we’re worthwhile as human beings without having to achieve anything on anyone’s standards, not even our own. Something like that. And there’s a if I can find it, there’s a very beautiful There was a there’s a one British psychologist by the name of RD Lang in one of his one of his patients. She, you know, she was a one of his patients and this is what she’s writing about. Joan relates, everyone should be able to look back in their memory and be sure that he had a mother who loved him, all of him, even his piss and shit.
He should be sure that his mother loved him just for being himself, not for what he could do. Otherwise, he feels he has no right to exist. He feels he should never have been born. No matter what happens to that person in life, no matter how much he gets hurt, he can always look back to this and feel that he is lovable, that he can love himself and he cannot be broken. If he can’t fall back on this, he can be broken.
So the sense, you know, getting in touch with, what he said, some of these primordial feelings when we were cared for for no other reason than the fact that we existed, that someone loved us, that we didn’t we couldn’t have earned that love. You know the Christians talk within the Christian context the love of God that you cannot earn the love of God. That simply by your existence you’re worthy of being loved and developing this feeling for yourself. Remembering everything that your mother did, trying to get in re in touch with these primordial feelings of of the psychological unity with your mother, with another being, and trying to awaken this in the kindness that was constantly being showered on you, undeserving, know, unrewarded. And then this is the precept of recognizing, remembering the kindness of our mother.
It occurs not out of a sense of a banker’s mentality, not out of a sense of, an accountant, you know, keeping books, but a wish to repay that kindness. That, you know, even there’s a there’s also a type of kindness, and this is the kindness of mothers in general, but there’s also the special type of mother of kindness when beings aren’t our mothers. This is referred to as special kindness, that people in general are kind to us at all times. And this, you know, Buddhism is very pragmatic. There’s no object of reality.
People say, you know, he did this, she did this, you deserve my anger, you deserve for me to relate to you like like I do. As as if there were some objective standards, objective reality with if anybody looked at the way this person was relating with you, there was, yes, you’re right, they’re being that way, they deserve exactly that attitude that you you relate with them with. But in fact, there is no objective reality. And that we can begin to determine what types of way we’re going to relate with the world. What type of how we’re going to actually perceive the world, and then constantly recreating the type of world that we want to live in.
That dependent upon these perceptions, we can train our perceptions, and we can train the way we relate with the world using as our standard the most skillful, the most meaningful, the most authentic, you know, emotions, feelings, attitudes as as that we’re trying to enrich our being with. That’s all. You know, we cannot we don’t know from the point of Buddhism, we can’t say this is right, this is wrong. Nobody knows that. Nobody can say this is good, this is bad.
Absolutely. There are no absolutes. It’s not absolutely wrong to kill. It’s not absolutely right to save life. We can’t say that.
But we can say that Buddha took the standard of suffering as the determining factor. And he said, it’s wrong to hurt yourself. It’s wrong to hurt others. It’s right to to make yourself happy and to make others happy. This is the standard of Buddhism.
This is the basis, the pragmatic approach of of life, which Buddhism makes use of. So in the in talking about the kindness of others, we’re talking about training our mind in a way which is going to be pragmatically beneficial for ourselves, which is going to lead us to a more enriched type of life. And people are going to say, but people aren’t kind. And that’s and and that that’s not the point. They are neither kind nor unkind.
Oh, absolutely. But it’s thinking that makes them so. You know? If we can take the attitude, we can see the kindness of others and it’s not in conflict with the actual reality of the situation, then who is there is not only no harm in that way of looking, but there’s great there’s a great deal of benefit at this way in that way of perceiving objects and way way of relating with people. So we’re talking about developing, training the mind in seeing people in a certain way, which is not in conflict with the actuality of the situation.
It’s a possible way of interpreting the situation, and it’s pragmatically tremendously beneficial way of looking at the situation. So, you know, the objection to say, well, they don’t mean to be kind. It holds no weight. The idea of, you know, we we all look upon our friends as being kind to us, and that’s quite easy. You know, we value our friends.
We like our friends. But how about strangers? You know, this building, this fan that’s turning, cooling this off that was made by some person in a factory sweating behind a machine. This building, this rug, you know, all these things that the Buddha house was all provided by the kindness of others. And you say, oh, they’re not kind.
They just did it for the money. You know, what do you mean? They didn’t care about me. Something like that. So, you know, to to to give a sort of a a more vivid example of what I mean.
You know, you your your child becomes ill, mortally ill, and the child’s very sick, and you’re you’re afraid it’s going to die. And the one thing that you want most in life is your child to live, that to be well, to be happy. That’s all your mind can think about. At that moment, may my child be well, may my child be happy. That’s all your mind is completely wrapped up in that one thought.
And you take your child to the hospital, they rush it rush your child into the operating room. And, you know, single pointedly, that’s completely absorbed in that one wish. You know, take my life, I don’t care, but make my child be happy. Something like that, completely wrapped up, completely bound. Your mind only wants that one thing in life.
And two hours later, the doctor comes out, the surgeon comes out of the operating room, she says, you know, it’s okay. Your son’s out of danger. He’s going to be okay. Okay, now we can react either of two ways. We can react in a there’s no doubt that that surgeon is going to send you a bill.
In a few weeks you’re going get a bill through the mail, that hospital is going to send you a bill the anesthesiologist is going to send you a bill they are going to send you their bills so you could say when the doctor says your son’s okay they’re oh how much is this going to cost me you you could react with that kind of anguished mentality because in fact that’s in accordance with your real situation Or you could think, now what but what would be a healthy what would be a more richer, meaningful way of relating reacting to that situation? A sense of what? A sense of thankfulness. A thank a a sense of gratitude that this person had trained, that they had taken the time to learn all these skills, that this all these facilities were available, that there are all these nurses, all these administrators had brought this whole thing together, and they had given you the one thing that you wanted most in your life, the life of your child, the well-being of your child. You got the one thing that you wanted most in life.
Now whether you’re going to pay for it or not, that’s another story altogether. That’s another question. But you got what you wanted. And when you get something that you want so dearly, the person who gave you that is extremely kind. You can you can sense you can develop a sense of gratitude, of thankfulness.
We can look at the same situation in this way. And what is a more meaningful response, a more healthy response? So we can look upon, you know, even strangers in the sense of their kindness, that we’re completely bound up, interdependent. We couldn’t live a day without this, you know, without the interdependence of other sentient beings, that we’re constantly getting what we need to survive, and more than survive, to be happy. If we extend that to enemies, it’s much more difficult.
But to think of the kindness of your enemies, I know the Dalai Lama has said, for example, with respect to the Chinese, that we owe the Chinese a great debt. That it’s due to the Chinese that we we really force us to practice the Dharma, that they that they we we we’re becoming soft. We’re becoming bound up in empty traditions in Tibet. But due to the kindness of the Chinese forcing us to leave our country, forcing us to begin to fall back in our own courage, our own strength, that they have been extremely kind to us, that we really developed ourselves. We had to practice the Dharma.
So it’s your enemy who’s going to more than your friend who’s going to help you in your spiritual life. You know, you don’t need to practice patience on your friends. You don’t need to your friend it’s not your friends who show you where you’re really at spiritually, where you’re really at psychologically. That more than that, our greatest teacher is our worst enemy. You know, Christ said, love your enemy.
He wasn’t a fool. He wasn’t confused. He saw this as a very skillful means of developing your spiritual qualities. If one can love one’s enemies, one can love anyone. Can’t one.
So this becomes a real benchmark of how we’re advancing, you know, how we’re developing ourselves spiritually. Beginning to appreciate the kindness of all sentient beings, specifically our mother. Developing a wish to repay their kindness. The what’s the third precept? Now coming to I think essentially, perhaps what could be relevant here is, you know, if you begin to have a sense that the kindness of others, and that other people are kind to you, and that you’re loved, that you’re worthy of being loved.
You know, a great deal of our thought, time, and energy is given over to finding love. But as long as finding love is an issue, we’re we’re probably never going to find it. But if, you know, in in looking at the kindness of others, that and really getting a sense that that you are worthy of kindness, that you’re worthy of love, that is to say, you you know, again, this idea of our inner world reflecting our outer world, that you really must be worthwhile person for people to be so kind to you, for people to have loved you so much, even though that you couldn’t have done anything to deserve it, that you begin to value yourself. And you begin to develop a sense of richness, of generosity, that you’re not this insufficient limited person that you had previously conceived yourself to be. And in fact, you have a great deal to offer.
And you begin to offer it in the sense of repaying this kindness. I think, you know, obviously, we can only begin to repay when we feel rich, when we feel like we have something to give. And we can only feel like we’re rich when we value ourselves. And we and that is very much dependent upon feeling valued, feeling loved. So this the sense of repaying is a natural overflowing of the feeling of love that we feel for ourselves, that we begin to feel has been given to us, showered down to us by others, the kindness of others, developing a wish to repay that kindness, to to love others.
You know, how can we best repay the kindness of others? You know, we can, in some way, being being willing to forego some of our it seems as if some kind of leap is necessary onto fresh ground. Again and again, some some type of chance taking or vulnerability. And this requires some self confidence, some some feeling of of self worth, that of richness within oneself. And the more that we’re able to see the world as a beautiful place, it’s very much a reflection of our own beautiful mind.
There’s a verse here. A depthless blue sky in autumn woods, I had forgotten how beautiful my mind can be. You know, that sometimes we forget that when we see a beautiful painting, you know, the the the saying that beauty is in the eyes of the beholder. That at that moment, we have a beautiful mind. And if we see others as kind, as loving, then this is a reflection of the quality that we’re finding within our own mind.
You know, they say that a person who has no has no attachment, a person who has no desires never sees a thief. He didn’t, you know, no one’s taking anything from him or her. We begin to develop the wish to repay, to begin to forgo our own to give over a little of our energy, time, our space, to give to begin to go public rather than hanging on to our parochial limited viewpoint or a narrow perspective, in the sense of wanting to to be able to benefit others. Then we develop in dependence upon wishing to repay the kindness of others. We develop, affection and love.
This is the fifth cause. All the various expressions of religion and spirituality join in stressing the importance of nurturing love and compassion in the development of spirituality. Our own human experience supports the urgency and necessity for developing and actualizing love and compassion. The mind which is disconnected from the heart lacks a vision of interconnectedness and lacks the power of inner transformation. How often do we need to see our resolutions fail, our glorious progress corrupt our societies and rape our planet before we hear the message that our minds need to be attuned to our hearts and grounded in the vision of connectedness if the power of our minds is to be used in a life enhancing rather than in a life negating way.
Thought alone cannot end the clinging greed, prejudice, and self centeredness that undermines the balance of our planet and the fundamental structures of human relationship. You know, essentially, you know, there are various degrees of love. Beginning with simply the friendly, warm attitude of wishing someone else happiness. Just like, maybe wouldn’t it be wonderful if that person was happy? And beginning just with a kind of a gentle thought.
And then this begins to we can build upon this to actually develop a more involvement, more strength in this thought, may you be happy. Until we get to the strongest type of love, which accepts the responsibility, I will make you happy. So it’s, you know, it’s very other centered. It’s very other orientated. It’s not self referencing.
It’s much it’s always concerned about the welfare of the beloved, the welfare of the other. So what we the essence of this precept in affectionate love is developing the ability to love others unconditionally. That is not that is in the sense of whatever their behavior may be toward us, to have unconditional positive regard in return, that we simply you know, for example, if someone were to spill coffee on you and you knew that it was an accident. It it may it may disturb you a little bit, you know, you may be annoyed, but you wouldn’t develop anger at them, you know, because they didn’t mean it. That is to say, your way of relating with them is very much dependent upon your perception of their intention towards you.
If they if they purposely spilled that coffee on you, you would react very readily with anger. You’d want, you know, with hatred. But but your perception, how you’re going to react, is determined upon how you see their their intention. So, you know, we begin to wonder, you know, do we have to spend our entire lives reacting simply in dependence upon how we perceive others’ intentions, or can we begin to choose how we wish to respond, irregardless of what we may think their intention might be? And this takes a very powerful strong mind, doesn’t it?
To be able to, rise above the other person’s intentionality, you know, how we may perceive their intentions, and and and give them unconditional positive regard no matter whether they’re hurting us, and whether matter whether they’re helping us, no matter whether they’re being indifference toward us. The same consistent unconditional positive regard wishing them happiness, this this feeling of caring. And then beneath all the various superficial changing flux of appearances to to have this consistency of approach to others. You know, we we we we have this in a way. You know, if you have a in a case of a of a of a male, if you had a good friend and that and that friend became drunk, you know, you knew this friend your entire life.
You had been through a lot of lot of experiences, life experiences together. You knew each other very well, all the ins and outs of each other. And and your friend became drunk or something, and and because they became drunk, during their not because, but during their drunk drunkenness, their drunken spree, they maybe they said, they gave you a hard time. They said some terrible things about you. And you said, oh, you know, you’d you’d laugh it off.
You wouldn’t pay any attention to it because you know them so well. You know? You know that this is just the drunkenness coming out, that you’ve been through a lot together. You know who they are deep down, that you’ve been through a lot of experiences, that you have a a deeper bond. And these superficial appearances of him saying this or her saying this aren’t really you don’t even regard them as significant.
You just want to take them home, put them on the bed, and they’ll be okay in the morning, something like this. That we can begin to see people on we can not so much get hum up on the superficial appearances of others, but to begin to regard them on a very much deeper level. And within the Buddhist context, this deeper level is their Buddha nature. If we need one reasonable reason to to love others, it is that they’re potential Buddhas, that they all have put the seed of Buddha within them. As it says, for example, in the Bodhicaryāvatāra, you know, that we respect the Buddhas in dependence upon the Buddhas and sentient beings will attain enlightenment.
We respect the Buddhas, but why don’t we respect sentient beings? That respecting that that they’re, you know, in the within the Hindu tradition, you know, perhaps not anymore, but when they used to say, namaste, that used to have the connotation of, you know, I I acknowledge the the divinity of you, you know, when you met someone. To the bodhisattva, no matter what the individual may be doing to them, he keeps or she keeps her eye on one aspect, that is their Buddha nature. That’s all that he or she is interested in, cultivating that Buddha nature. He knows, she knows that there’s love, that there’s compassion within that being, no matter what they may be doing to him, no matter what the superficial happenings may be.
He knows or she knows that there’s wisdom there, that there’s all the seeds of enlightenment there, and he’s only concerned with cultivating that. And therefore, there’s there’s always unconditional positive regard for that individual. You know, whether we talk about the Christ nature of an individual or Buddha nature of an individual, that all sentient beings are are worthy of our positive regard, no matter, you know, what may be that shifting superficial appearances. So this is the end result of this fifth cause, developing affectionate love, beginning to have unconditional positive regard over and above the the fleeting ephemeral superficial appearances which are constantly shifting. But within that shifting flux, keeping your eye on the essence of that individual that there’s someone there who has compassion, has wisdom, someone who has Buddha nature, has a Christ nature, some divinity about them or her.
Then in dependence upon that, wishing to cultivate that, wishing them to develop that. We develop compassion. I think I should stop there. I didn’t I was yeah. I’ll stop there.
So I thought we’d Yeah. I thought we’d start meditating on a different subject each Friday evening rather than, you know, doing the loving kindness meditation each evening. So I’ll go through a series of meditations. We’ll take a different one each Friday, each each evening at the close of the talk. You know, I hope you’ll bear with me on that we haven’t got the regularity yet, but it’s coming.
So If you have if you’re comfortable, I’ll lead you through a meditation. This is the graduated path, a system of meditations. So initially, we want to think of some quality. You know, initially, think of someone that you admire, that you respect, male or female, someone that you you look up to. What is it about them that you admire so much?
What is it that you respect? What quality? What is it about their character that impresses you so much? Then imagine using your imagination that you have this quality yourself, this characteristic that you now admire in this person, this other person, that you yourself have it. And it just put yourself in various situations, play a role where you express this very same quality, this very same characteristic, and other people admire you, respect you in the same way that you now respect and admire this other person.
So just play a role taking on this admirable quality and express it in various situations. And think of some negative quality that you now possess, something that you don’t like about yourself. Then imagine that you have the opposite of that negative quality, its counterpart, complete opposite of the present negative quality. That you now have that. Now imagine the appropriate situation where you express this opposite quality using your imagination.
Now think of some positive quality that you now possess, something that you like about yourself, some good characteristic. And imagine that this positive quality is fully developed, completely developed. Again, imagine a situation play a role using your imagination where you now express this fully developed positive quality. Now consider what kind of person would you like to be five years from now. Not what you possess, not what you might accomplish, but the qualities of your being.
What types of character, personality would you like to have five years from now? And what are your obstacles to becoming that type of person that you want to be five years from now, to developing those qualities? What types of hindrances do you have? And what are you doing to to bring about, in fact, the type of person that you want to be five years from now? And where is your present direction going to take you?
Your predominant attitudes of your everyday life, your predominant behavior. What direction are you heading? Where can you expect to arrive five years from now, ten years from now? And we can dedicate the positive energy that we created. Through these merits, may I soon attain the enlightened state of Guru Buddha, and may I lead every migrating being without exception to that state.
May the precious bodhicitta, not yet born, arise and grow. May that born have no decline, but increase evermore.