Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. A mechanical pencil taken apart piece by piece anchors this 47-minute session: Ven Jampa Gendun shows that no individual part, and no collection of parts, qualifies as “the pencil” — so the pencil exists only because mind labels it. This is dependent arising, the other face of emptiness, and the point Tsongkhapa makes in the Three Principal Aspects of the Path: renunciation and compassion alone cannot cut the root of cyclic existence; only wisdom realising emptiness can. Along the way Gendun reframes ego not as a beast that can finally be satiated but as the compulsive pattern of desire itself, and closes with the hearer-stage analysis of self — showing why the implied, unchanging, independent self we take for granted is the root of all attachment and suffering. Suited to students already working through Tsongkhapa’s text.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 09 3 PA 1989 06 16.mp3
UUID: 438bc648-929d-4299-8cae-0136be6a1fbe
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: Three Principal Aspects of the Path 1988-1990 (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 1989-06-16
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 47.0 minutes
Words: ~4,277
Depressed and relaxed in the darkness. We can’t handle life. We we know that. We all know. Now taking refuge in Buddha doesn’t necessarily mean an act of faith in Buddha.
We can take refuge in your own wisdom and light. That’s why as I told you before, don’t think we are completely full of darkness, completely covered without any good quality. Remember? You have wisdom. For example, Tibet used the symbol of the Dorje and bell.
The bell signifies wisdom, the clear mind, the clarity of the clean, clear mind. When you have a clean, clear mind, you can handle things better, communicate better. Understand? When you are confused, then you can’t. Okay?
That’s what I’m saying. You have clean, clear mind right now and you can trust that clean, clear wisdom. You can trust it more. You can rely on it instead of your grasping mind, your ignorant mind. That’s simple.
So you don’t worry about I’m taking refuge or its freedom. The qualities we’re committing ourselves to through the clarity of our own mind, the development, to trusting and making use of our own wisdom, to trusting and making use of our own being. A fish out of water, what would it be like? It has no basis of comparison to imagine a society, a group of people who are dedicated to growth committing themselves to actualizing their potential. It’s very much down but in many ways are the values, the norm. So, you know, Tsongkhapa Tsongkhapa, the fourteenth century yogi scholar who who wrote this little text that we’re slowly working our way through. Tsongkhapa, he starts off in the three principal aspects of the text.
He says that merely by developing the determination to be free, and really by opening the hearts to others. That these in themselves cannot cut the root of cyclic existence. That they cannot cut you, they cannot eliminate an ego based existence. And all in this fear of loss, the hope of gain.
All of these processes which are the ongoing dream of ego, which we are caught up in, is the self perpetuating self maintaining structures, which are the basis of self deception. You know, talking about ego. The mental events. You know, it’s not as you know, ego is the reoccurring compulsive patterns. And no matter how much we search, no matter how much blood, sweat, and tears, you know, we may go through, no matter how much we may try to satiate, you know, these compulsions, again, and again, and again.
And, that desire can never be satisfied with another. You know, we’re always going to have to begin again in trying to find eternal peace, trying to find eternal bliss, and we’re always going to suffer failure, we’re always going to suffer depression. So, you know, idea is that ego is not some, like some beast that we can finally satiate once and for all if we sacrifice enough to. It’s not something, some entity which can once and for all be satisfied. It is the search itself, ambition itself.
It’s just going to change objects, what it’s searching for, what it’s ambition is. It is desire itself. It is conflict itself. It is self deception itself. So these these are not just manifestations of ego.
They are ego. They are not just simply actions of ego as if ego was somehow a real thing which performs certain kinds of action. Ego is the action. You know these mental events. So ego is these, are these compulsive reoccurring patterns.
And no matter how many hundreds of millions of times we try to satiate it, they’re going to remain. The patterns are still there. That’s the point. No matter how many times you satisfy desire, the predisposition to desire is still within your mind and it’s going to arrive again. The pattern, the compulsive pattern is there.
When it meets the correct condition, it’s going to repeat itself. No matter how many times you satisfy your hatred, the pattern is still there. When it meets the correct condition, it’s going to manifest itself. So, as long as the patterns of, for example, desire remain in the mind, there is no end to lose desire no matter how many hundreds and millions of times you satisfy the desire. No matter what, and if you were to bring everything imaginable and sacrificing all that you had to its demands, there would be no end to it.
The wheel would just keep turning again and again and again and again. No matter, no matter how well, how nicely your, a prison may be constructed, no matter how refined, how well stocked the prison may be, it’s still a prison. And There’s still no freedom. There’s no spontaneity. There’s no peace.
There’s no love. It’s going to keep reoccurring. This is reoccurring patterns of our prism that we’re trapped in. Therefore, Tsongkhapa says, be admonished with them. Work at the means of realizing dependent arising.
Dependent arising is the other side of the coin of emptiness. Because things are dependent arising, things are empty. Because things are empty, they are dependent arising. Meaning we ask for the empty of what? They’re empty of a fantasized way of existing.
A certain way of existing. The word emptiness, for example, this room is empty of pink elephant. There’s something which isn’t here. Something doesn’t exist in this room. This room is empty of a certain type of non existent.
That non existent is pink elephant. This room is empty of pink elephants. Empty of cars. It’s empty of new things. Now there’s a very special type of emptiness we’re talking about.
A certain type of non existence we’re talking about. A type of, an emptiness of a fantasized way of existing, of an imagined way of existing. We call this way of existing inherent existence, true existence, objective existence, natural existence. It has many names. Each one has a slightly different meaning.
None of these are all fantasized ways of existence. Things are empty of that fantasized ways of existence. Things are empty of inherent existence. Things are empty of objective existence. So, inherent existence is not a concept which is being superimposed by a philosophic system.
Something was created out of it. Some system of thinking. Some tenet system. Some philosophy. But it refers to our ordinary sense of the way things exist.
Our ordinary sense of the way things exist as if they concretely exist from their own side in and of themselves. This is the way we naturally conceive of things to exist as if they exist in and of themselves on their own side objectively independently. Instinctively, this is the way we conceive of objects to exist. So we’re not talking about some fabricated way of existence that we’ve made up. Now we’re going to imagine that objects have this and then we’re going to take it back away from them.
But it’s our habitual, natural, instinctive mode of thinking of It exists from its own side. That’s the way I naturally consider. No one taught me that. It’s instinctive. That that way of existence is a fantasized way of existing.
The book actually doesn’t Phenomena are things which are empty of inherent existence. An inherent existence is that which phenomena are empty. Phenomena are empty of inherent existence and inherent existence is that which things are empty of. So, we’re working to come to an, you know this is our long term goal. We’re Working to try to come to an understanding about emptiness.
Understanding the kind of horizon. The pivot of practice of emptiness and of the generation of the wisdom that realizes interest is the identification of the object. That objects appear as if they existed in and of themselves. We have to be able to identify what it is — the way objects are appearing to ourselves naturally, even to our eye consciousness — that these appear to exist independent of my mind for example.
Independent of causes and conditions. Independent of parts in and of themselves. This is what we have to begin to identify. What does that mean? What does that look like?
What does that feel like? What does that taste like? Then an attempt is having made that identification of what the way things appear to ourselves, having identified that. Then we try to find an object, you know, this object which so boldly appears to us. You know to be self existent.
When the mind becomes fully absorbed and attempting to find that object, it looks for it among its parts, looks at the composite of the parts, looks at separate from the parts. Everywhere it’s trying to find that object which so boldly appeared to it before it began its analysis. So, if this search is done with a great deal of interest and real intensity, the significance of not being able to find an object is said to be earth shaking. Just the doubt about whether things truly exist or not is said to shake the very foundations of cyclic existence. This is the way that the root of cyclic existence is cut.
This is a way of relating based upon the mistaken models. It’s completely eliminated and therefore suffering. And then we’re going to try to eliminate our suffering through the elimination of of ignorance, which is the root of our problem, the root of our difficulty. You know, to give you, you know, just an example. The idea of the way we’re going to perform analysis, the way we’re going to try to understand, identify the object of negation, identify the object which we’re trying to refute, identify what true existence must look like.
This is the most difficult point in the understanding of emptiness. As a mechanical pencil, okay. So, we normally don’t make an analysis. We just accept that the objects exist the way they appear without question, without examination. Now we’re going to examine to see whether this common sense approach has any validity in actual fact.
The pen exists, it appears to us to exist from its own side without depending upon our mind. It’s very difficult to see that this quality of the way the opinion is appearing is not depending upon our mind. If we make an analysis, just is that answering my question? This is not rigged, is it? I’m not an originator.
I’m just I’m just selected someone out of the studio audience at random. Okay. Good. It is a mechanical pencil. Okay.
Is there anything left over that’s a pencil? Is we take all the parts? Is is the collection of the parts, is that a pencil? The collection, the mere collection of the parts. So, none of so we saw a pencil which really looks so real to us.
There’s no question about depends upon my mind. Is this really it’s out there? Solid, concrete, existing from its own side objectively. That’s really good. I could go out and buy a dozen of them.
It’s really worth having. But then when we did an analysis, perhaps it doesn’t quite fit up to our expectations. None of the parts individually is the pencil. The composite, the group of the parts, the grouping of the parts is not a pencil. There’s nothing left over which is a pencil.
Upon analysis, upon breaking it down, looking analyzing, we cannot find that pencil which looks so solidly, which looks objectively, exist objectively. So, we have to think a little maybe, a little to look past our eyes about what is the actual status of the pencil. What does it really exist? So dig into we’ll we’ll do some little trick here. So the pencil appears as if out of nowhere.
Things that were not the pencil come together and make a pencil. And what what does that tell us about the pencil? I think it’s pencil there. Yeah? What does that tell us about the pencil?
Does it say anything about the pencil? It say anything about the pencil? No. No. No.
No. We’re just this is very all common sense. There was a pencil there. There wasn’t a pencil there. And when when I put it together in a special way, you know, get all the points and special design, then what happened?
Yeah. Stick them all together. Did become a pencil? The parts they had to be well, parts that you know, I had all the parts spread out. It wasn’t a pencil, was it?
Has to be well, in a special way, there is some preconceived plan. And so the part that tend to depends. Depends upon us conceiving it as a conception. When we put together in a special way, ah, my mind labels, conceives, imputes, designates, pen, pencil. I can see if I organize those parts.
Can recognize them as being a pencil. Without my being able to recognize it as a pencil, because if I didn’t conceive it as a pencil, the pencil doesn’t exist. I wasn’t really sure. Really? What did you understand?
Yeah. So we are organizing our universe. We’re we we things are dependent arising. They’re dependent upon many things. They depend, for example, on causes and conditions.
This was manufactured in a factory and made out of metal, etcetera. And it’s dependent upon its parts. They put all the parts together, but it’s also dependent upon concepts and terms. It’s dependent upon being labeled by mind Without that conception, without me conceiving this as a pen, a pen doesn’t exist. Pen is dependent upon my own mind.
Beauty is dependent upon my own mind. Ugliness is dependent upon my own mind. That don’t exist objectively. Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder. We all hear that expression and Buddhism would agree, but they would extend it to its ultimate final conclusion that everything is in the eyes of the human.
So, know, we’re going to explain, work with this idea and see what the significance of that idea is. But, You know this pin and all the various objects of course appear as if they don’t depend upon anything. This table doesn’t depend on, it seems like it’s very solid concrete. Exists in and of itself. It’s like self power independently existing.
Because there was never a moment when we had not conceived of objects to exist otherwise. Constantly, since the beginning of time, we have conceived of objects to exist objectively in and of themselves from their own self. And it s very difficult for us to begin to conceive of what an object would be like that existed dependently. It s difficult to begin to identify what it means to exist independently. What it means to exist concretely, objectively, inherently.
You know this, we’re working with that idea because we’ve never known the opposite and we can’t conceive of what it might be like. This is the most important point. This identification process. Identifying what is called the object of negation. An object which exists independent of all other factors.
And we’re coming to an understanding of emptiness. Things are empty of the object of negation. Object of negation is for example true existence, truly existent table. Inherently existent table, naturally existent table. A table existing from its own side, independent existent table.
So things are empty of that. This is the object which is to be negated. A truly existent table is to be negated, it’s to be refuted. Though it appears that way, but in fact it doesn’t actually exist that way. So, now the the identity of the object of negation.
Some introductory remarks which we’re going to cover in more detail later. Identity of the object of negation becomes more and more subtle as you pass up through the various systems of tenets, the various schools of Buddhism. You know we talked about this, the four stages in the coming to an understanding of emptiness. We talked about, we haven’t discussed them individually. The hearer stage, the mind only school stage, the autonomy middle way school stage and then finally the Prāsaṇgika Madhyamaka school stage.
The object negation becomes more and more subtle. So the problem is we have to begin at a very gross stage to identify a very gross object of negation. Just like when a doctor is examining x rays and going through the training, first they have to be able to identify the very gross indications of what the x-ray and to be able to interpret the gross indications of what the x-ray is expressing, the various signs. After they can begin to see the very gross indications then they can begin to interpret even very subtle shadows that would go unnoticed by a new student. The more training they have, they begin to notice the x-ray gives them more and more information.
It s more and more significant. Their ability to interpret it becomes more and more subtle. They are able to see more and subtle information coming from that x-ray. But initially they have to get in a very gross, you know, this bone is broken. Because it’s broken and it’s because it’s separate.
Because it is separate. So also in coming to an understanding of emptiness, it’s necessary to identify the gross object of negation There is this progressive stages and coming into an understanding of emptiness. Passing through these four stages of meditation, understanding, presentation. So we’re at the hearing stage. At the hearing stage we’re not concerned with the emptiness of all phenomena.
In the middle way school, it is held that all phenomena, everything is empty. But here, in the hearing stage, we’re not concerned with that. We’re only concerned with the emptiness or the lack of self of the person. The emptiness or lack of self of the person. So what do you know?
What what does it matter if the person is empty and lack the lack of self of the person? The the importance of this is the clinging to the idea one has an unchanging, single, independent self, truly existing self is the root cause of all of our suffering. This is the significance, the necessity for coming to this understanding of the emptiness of such a self. Clinging to the idea, the conception, the belief that the self is unchanging, single, independently existing is the root of all of our suffering. So, seems rather imperative that we need to try to understand what this is all about.
We don’t have to have this idea of a self. We don’t have to have an explicit or clearly formulated idea of a self in order to act as if we have a self. You don’t have to constantly be aware that I have a self or not in order to act as if we had one. That’s not the problem. Now in this discussion again to emphasize again, self here does not mean the validly existing conventional self.
I’m talking to you and you’re listening to me. I’m sitting on this cushion. I’m an American. This is a validly existing empirical self. And this self is a no problem whatsoever.
Maybe to some extent. But we’re talking about a misconceived implicit self. A misconceived implicit self. You even animals have such a self, an implied self. Animals just like ourselves, they identify themselves with their bodies and minds and are constantly seeking pleasure in their physical and mental comfort as they try to avoid discomfort.
Animal has a sense of this implied self. Implied self which identifies with the body and mind. It seeks to bring comfort to the body and mind and seeks to remove suffering from the body and mind. Both animals and humans act as they have a self to protect and to foster. Self to protect and preserve.
We regard this behavior as quite natural. S automatic. It s normal. But there s a, but you know we can begin to question that there s a big difference between, for example on one hand, protecting the body and mind from physical, protecting the body from physical injury thereby protecting the self on the one hand. Protecting the self against physical injury.
You’re protecting the body. There’s no question that if someone threw a stone at you, then you should put up your hand protecting the body. And protecting the body protects the self. But when somebody abuses you, in protecting, you know, we seek to protect the self, we’re not seeking to protect the mind. There’s a difference between seeking to protect your body against physical injury and to protect yourself against physical injury.
If we have pain or discomfort, the automatic response is to try to remove it as if that pain or discomfort was extraneous to the self, was not a part of the self, was outside the self. This implies, this implication of this is that if we could get rid of this pain, this discomfort, then the self would naturally be happy. And we talked about the the changing leaves. The tree leaves on the trees, they change to green. Then they change to red.
Then they change to yellow. Then they change to brown. So, you know, in talking this way, it implies in some sense that it would be able to have a substance without any attribute. That is to say, we could have a leaf hanging from that tree which didn’t have any color. This seems to be, you know, some what we call a substratum, which is which is the You know, we talk about we say this leaf this leaf is beautiful.
This this leaf is a beautiful color. This leaf has beautiful as the substratum of the attributes. Just like this leaf is held to be a substratum of these attributes. All of this, the pain and happiness which appear appear are simply added or subtracted. We try to add happiness to this self and we try to take away suffering from this self. In the example of the leaf, the leaf can change from green to red to yellow. Something underneath is changing to a different color. And likewise, there’s something underneath which we can remove pain from and add happiness too. Therefore, s a sense of, there s a sense that we can push the pain away from this, from this self. That I am not this pain.
It’s something which is being transplanted onto me and I can push it away and I can bring happiness and make it transplanted into me. But there’s something there that we can add and subtract to. This add and subtraction process, in order to engage in it, we respond with emotions of attachment, desire, and hatred, aversion. We’re trying to attach happiness to this thing, foster it, trying to push away pain from it, protect it, and avert it if it’s a new threat. So this is the way hatred and attachment arise If we begin to analyze the situation and how our behavior and relationship itself, we can begin to realize that we are very unclear as to what the self really is.
You know, talking about what the self really is. You know, if the self is to have any meaning, we’re talking about what’s in the hearer stage. If it’s it’s to have any meaning, you know, when I physically or emotionally respond, I say I can’t stand you or I’m afraid or I’m fearful. I’m hurt. The self has to be unchanging.
If the self were changing from moment to moment for example, then we wouldn’t be so concerned about what’s going to happen the next moment. What’s going to happen tomorrow, next year. We could make plans. There’s no question about that. But the concern, the worry about what s going to happen the next moment would not be there.
If the self were momentary because that next self wouldn t be the self present. There would be another self. So we have to believe an unchanging self that this present self is going to experience the next moment and the next moment and the next moment. Therefore, I better be concerned about what that self experiences because that’s me. My present self is going to undergo this situation.
It s unchanging self. The next moment self, if it was momentary, would not be one self anymore. It would be another self. Again, if the self were single or unitary, if one had no separate identity, then why would one worry about what happened to oneself anymore than what one would worry about what happened to others. There wouldn’t be the sense that this is happening to me.
This unit, this thing over here as compared to what happened to that unit over there. It would be the same as if it happened to you. I would have should have that same concern with the self. We’re not single. We’re not unitary.
And if the self were not independent, there would be no sense of saying I did this or I had that. If one had no independent existence there would be no one to claim the action. No one to take, to experience it, the experiences as its own. This is what happened to me. I was hurt.
You weren’t hurt, I was hurt. This sense of separateness, independence. I can claim these experiences as my own experiences. So, we all act as if we had an unchanging, single, independent