Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Ven Jampa Gendun opens this three-minute session with a pointed observation: the hopes people bring to the path — expecting it to make them happy — become its first obstacle. He traces a movement from mindfulness of death, through the recognition that hopes and fears will be repeatedly disappointed, to the possibility of what he calls “real work.” The talk’s sharpest moment is its reframing of practice as utterly ordinary: cultivating the mind sits alongside going to work, earning money, and cooking dinner — nothing elevated, nothing dramatic. He closes with a brief, wry reflection on the word “hope” itself before leading the group into silent meditation. Suited to practitioners at any level who are prone to over-investing in the path as a source of comfort.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 08 3 PA 1990 03 16.mp3
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: Three Principal Aspects of the Path 1988-1990 (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 1990-03-16
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Words: ~310
Become mindful of death. No matter what you may achieve, no matter through all these hopes and fears, it’s going to come to an end, but something else will continue. And that’s something else is worth cultivating, developing. But it cannot to cultivate it, you have to you know, these hopes and your fears are going to represent an obstacle. Everybody begin.
Everybody. I mean, everybody comes to the path with expecteachings they want to do. Hope it’s going to make them happy. So some quite often the path necessarily involves a great deal of being disappointed again and again and again. And then there’s a possibility of real real work.
Rather than entertaining yourself. That sounds like it’s made. That’s not made up to the sound like it’s all black and hard and difficult. That’s not the point. Should become very practical.
It should just be something that something very ordinary. You know, you have to go to work, have to make money, you have to eat, cook, and you have to cultivate your mind. It’s not a big deal. Anybody have a comment? That sounds good.
Mean, yeah. Hope is a very funny word, isn’t it? We use it quite often. There’s an emotion hope I think. Hope.
I hope you’re right. Drive. Well, so we sit and meditate for a few minutes.