Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. The “hot dog at the baseball game” — Ven Jampa Gendun’s image for meditators who should pass arising thoughts along without biting in or pushing away — sets the tone for this 47-minute session. He opens with step-by-step mindfulness-of-breathing instructions: counting breaths in sets of five, then layering in notation of whatever the mind touches, then releasing into choiceless awareness. A personal story from retreat on a Thai island introduces the phrase “begin again” as an antidote to self-judgment. The talk then pivots to the third of the Three Principal Aspects of the Path — seeing deeply into reality — explaining how ego-grasping generates suffering in the same way that mistaking a coiled rope for a snake generates fear: the object of the belief simply does not exist.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 09 3 PA 1989 09 15.mp3
UUID: 9248b28f-2ba2-4c27-aca3-9222aa14b92e
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: Three Principal Aspects of the Path 1988-1990 (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 1989-09-15
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 46.6 minutes
Words: ~5,429
So he’s simply talking about the practice of mindfulness, which we usually begin the evening off with a mindfulness of breathing. So it involves simply sitting straight, following the breath, and letting thoughts come and go without trying to control them or direct them in a more pleasant direction. As soon as we give up control and let ourselves be in this way, the confusion of churning thoughts and feelings may become more noticeable. In observing our thoughts which graphically portray what is driving us, we get a very intimate sense of areas of our life where we are afraid, fixated, or grasping too tightly. So meditation provides an opportunity to let this confusion arise and be there.
Gently bringing our attention back to the breath helps keep us from getting lost in the chaos of thoughts and feelings so that we can begin to let the confusion arise without identifying with it and eventually go to its root. We begin to learn how to keep our seat, how not to get thrown or carried away by the wild horse of the mind, but rather to stay alert and keep riding no matter where the mind may go. In so doing, the mind begins to slow down, the horse gets tired, and we get a glimpse of another way of being. Instead of being driven and carried away by our thoughts, we can begin to tap into a deeper, wider awareness, which is quite refreshing. Meditation takes us directly to the root of confusion and allows us to see how we are driven by fear which arises from uncertainty about who we are amidst the constantly changing flux of life.
Meditation provides an opportunity to directly experience how we keep trying to manufacture and hold onto a fixed identity as a defense against the uncertainties surrounding our lives. As I’ve been saying quite often, Buddhism is simply most about the way we learn, we study ourselves and begin to apply what we learn to solving our problems. So I’m going to go over briefly the meditation instructions on mindfulness of breathing just for some of the people who haven’t heard them before and as a refresher. So we’re simply going to watch the natural breathing process. There’s no prolonged breathing.
There’s no holding the breath. Just the natural quiet breathing. And to help us develop the two mental factors of mindfulness and awareness which are essential to meditation, we’re going to use two techniques. And you can use these at your discretion. They’re not particularly holy.
They’re just to help you. So you can make use of them when and if they are a benefit and drop them at any time in your life. So mindfulness, we’re going to use the technique of counting. Simply mentally, not verbally, mentally in your mind softly counting the breaths. And we do it in this fashion.
Breathing in and out, we count one, in and out, two, and out, three, in and out, four, in and out, five. Come back down to one. One, two, three, four, five, six. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven. One, eight, one, nine, one, ten.
And if you get up to ten, you’re picking at five again. Otherwise you might get ambitious. Try to get yourself in the Guinness Book of Records or something. Continuous mindfulness of bringing and counting or something. So this is simply to give our mind a grosser object.
You know like a baby. It doesn’t have the flexibility or coordination to pick up a very delicate object. Perhaps it can pick up a ball, a rattle, but not a needle. So likewise, initially we need a very gross object, a very coarse object. So we’re using counting, something that’s able to hold our mind.
And the stronger the stimulus, the easier it is for the mind to remain on that object quite naturally. So the method, the technique we can use to help us develop our awareness is called notation or noting. Again, simply noting in the mind, not verbally but quietly, gently noting whatever it is that the mind is being involved in. Now ideally it’s involved in the breathing, so we’re noting that first. When we breathe in, simply knowing that we’re breathing in, we note in.
When we breathe out, knowing that we’re breathing out to help us emphasize that fact, to develop the factor of awareness, noting out. So now we have something like in out one, in out two, in out three, in out four, in out five. So your mind is going to wander. It’s going to be distracted. Simply note, the moment you become aware that your mind is wandered, whatever the object it is involved in, the type of awareness, the type of consciousness which is involved.
For example, I’m sitting in out one, in out two and I listen to the heater that’s on. In out one, in out two, hearing in out one, I go back to the breath. In out one, in out two, hearing in out one, hearing in out one, in out two, pain, my knee hurts. My mind was distracted to the pain in my knee. In out, one, you know, pain, pain, you know, one, hearing, you know, one, know, two, making, thinking.
My mind was distracted too, some thoughts which came up. So, we want to know what the mind is involved in from moment to moment. Softly noting using this technique. We can drop the counting, we can drop the noting as your mind becomes more and more subtle. I think the counting would be dropped first and then eventually you could begin to drop the noting.
Now, I’m going to repeat another instruction. One of the most profound schools of western psychological therapy called hot dog what do they call that? Transactional analysis, which I just invented. Transactional analysis to give us some idea about how we can treat the thoughts and emotions and feelings which are definitely going to arise. Not definitely but probably will arise.
You know we aren’t trying to be perfect meditators. We’re trying to learn. I think that’s a good thing to keep in mind. It’s a learning process. We’re not trying to completely still the mind.
We’re not trying to gain single point of concentration on the breath. We’re trying to learn about ourselves. So taking advantage of this situation of introspection, of this opportunity to learn about a part of ourselves which has up to now been probably only we’ve been only dimly aware of. Beginning to come in contact with more subtle portions of our consciousness. Those levels of our consciousness which up to now perhaps have been unconscious or subconscious.
Know subconscious is just another word for that we aren’t very aware of people. Ultimately all of consciousness must be known, must be made aware of. Trans hot dog analysis. So we’re sitting in America, United States, you’re sitting at the baseball game. You may not like baseball but bear with me.
You’re sitting at the baseball game and there’s this fellow going up and down the aisles. You’re in the bleacher seats. These rows of you know benches and there’s about maybe forty people sitting along each row and then there’s an aisle on each side. And then this man’s walking up and down the aisle and he’s got this metal box strapped around his neck. And in this box are these fat, long, juicy hot dogs.
And you know when somebody orders a hot dog, you know it’s very impractical to move all the way up to the aisle, the rope and go to the aisle and buy your hot dog. So you just kind of wave your hand. The guy acknowledges you and he kind of makes signs. You want relish, want mustard, want ketchup, onions, pickles. And then he gets it all together and he puts it on a napkin, a serviette, and he gives it to the first person.
The first person gives it to the second person. The second person gives to the third person. And perhaps you’re sitting there very intently watching the baseball game and you’re concentrating on the baseball and someone taps you on the shoulder and they put this hot dog in your hand. And just look down at this hot dog that’s just been placed in your hand. It’s got this fresh, steamy bun and all this luscious relish and mustard.
Thought before you are aware perhaps, kind of a reflex action is just to take a huge bite out of this hot dog and stuff it in your face. But it’s not your hot dog. You want a hot dog you can order one up. Your job in this whole process is simply to pass the hot dog along. The hot dog is placed in you, in your hand.
It looks very tempting but it’s not your hot dog. You don’t identify with that hot dog. You pass it to the next person who may have ordered it. If you want a hot dog, that’s fine. You can raise your hand and you’ll get your hot dog.
So likewise, during the course of meditating on the breathing, on mindfulness and breath, thoughts are going to arise. Feelings are going to arise. And we can treat them very much like hot dogs. Sometimes they look quite luscious. You want to take a bite into them.
And by luscious, the ego is constantly trying to manufacture reference points to maintain its existence. So it’s not particularly concerned in a way about whether these luscious thoughts, feelings are positive or negative. It’s quite as willing, it’s just as happy to be depressed as it is happy in a way. In the sense that depression validates existence, maintains its existence, stabilizes existence, depression or happiness. So by luscious it’s just something that we would either want to indulge in or repress.
We either want to grab hold of it or we want to push it away. In some way we want to react to it. This is what I’ve mentioned that Chögyam Trungpa used to call obsessive mind. We have to we feel like we’re forced to take some position on this emotion, on this thought. Either, Oh, I don’t want to think about the And we force our mind to think about something else or we bite into it.
And we develop this logic of this script and we go off into a fantasy story of our own about being led on by this initial train of thinking. We neither indulge nor repress. Simply acknowledge there’s a hot dog and pass it on. So it’s a matter of simply acknowledging without repressing and without indulging. Initially we have to have the determination.
Have to have some confidence in what we’re doing, some feeling that the possibility of rerooting one’s sense of identity and being rather than becoming. And simply to be and to learn about yourself in the process of being to allow ourselves to gain awareness of deeper levels of our what is now unconsciousness. Unconscious is a very therapeutic and very growth promoting process. Having that confidence and therefore making the determination that I’m not going to either indulge or repress because it’s quite tempting to bite into the hot dog. Know, I just had the realization of God.
Okay, it’s just another hot dog. You can just whatever the thought, whatever the feeling, just pass it on. You have to sort of make this determination. This is worthwhile to do. Now I’m meditating.
I can think about this other you know. I can think about that later. Now I’m meditating. Now I’m being. Now I’m learning about myself.
This is the few minutes that I’ve taken out of my busy life to learn about myself. What’s happening in my dimly lit inner world. I set aside this time. I want to make it quality time. And I can fantasize any time.
You know, on my way to work, on the bus, driving, any time, at the office, at school, whatever. But now I make some quality time. Making a determination. This is the way I can use this quality time is simply to not neither indulge, neither repress, but just be. Be in this moment and begin to learn about myself.
That’s quality time. That’s a method of growth. Making this determination. So we’ll try that for a few moments. Oh, yeah.
We also introduced not another method but extension. The process we started a few weeks ago about choiceless awareness. Again, we drop the counting because we’re no longer going to determine what the object of our awareness is. We’re going to first meditate on mindfulness of breathing. We’re going to stabilize our mind.
And then we’re going to allow the mind to attend to become involved in any object that naturally is directed toward. That will most likely be that which is the most stimulating object in the environment. It may be an internal object such as thoughts, feelings. It may be an external object like that heater fan always going all the time, constant Or maybe a pain. Could be anything.
We simply have developed this quality of awareness at all times. Just that we know what we’re about. We’re in the present moment. Always to be aware is to be in the present moment. It’s to begin to cut through of the fantasies and the mental constructions of ego.
We have to get in touch with reality. This is what’s happening in this moment. This is my life. This is what I’m actually experiencing. So whatever the mind naturally is drawn to, simply from moment to moment quietly, mentally noting.
You know hearing, hearing. Then some thought comes up thinking, thinking pain in my leg. Pain, pain, hearing, pain, thinking, thinking, feeling, feeling, thinking. Moment slowly, softly, just gently, being aware of moment to moment. And then, if you become very confused, then go back to the breathing.
Stabilize yourself. And then try again. And then, okay, we’ll try that. Okay. Natural breathing.
Determine to bring the mind back to the breath. Counting, noting. Now allow the mind to attend to any object, to become any object that it’s naturally involved in, that it naturally tends towards. Don’t try to influence its direction, but maintain your awareness. Noting from moment to moment the nature of that involvement.
Maintain your awareness. And then return to the breathing. Inside the universe of refuge. Few years ago, it’s been two years since I came to Australia, I came from India after I had been in India for about two months. Just previous to that I had spent a year in Thailand.
And part of that time, a large most of the time was spent on an island called Koh Samui, up the south east coast. And I spent some little bit of that time in meditation. During the course of that period of time, Spending some time, considerable time in seclusion, you know, mind will begin to become aware of certain parts of your mind which perhaps go unnoticed in the busy course of our lives. Some of them aren’t very pretty. Some of them are quite ugly.
We’d rather not know about them perhaps. But anyway, they’re there. Like to acknowledge. So during this course of this meditation, this retreat that I was involved, many of you have done meditation retreats of one length or another and sometimes they can be very beautiful moments And sometimes they’re very depressing, kind of horrifying moments. And your mind goes up and down like a yo yo, like I’m going on a roller coaster.
But after a while, the roller coaster begins to smooth out a little bit and you do get some even mindedness. But you do get in touch with a lot of the negativities within yourself. All the feelings of all your shortcomings, all your hang ups, all your feelings of insufficiency, unworthiness, of pettiness. And at this monastery that I stayed at, it was a Thai monastery. There were two Thai monks.
There was myself and two Thai monks. And we used to have, you know we used to go for our alms round to a fishing village nearby. And we would go for our alms to get our meal for the day and we would come back and we would eat together. I would quite often share my experiences with one monk and I’m not sure how much he understood what I was saying. I think he roughly had an idea.
Know, his English wasn’t all that good. And I would say, today, I can’t stand myself. Oh, I’ve got this terrible one. Oh, I don’t know what I’m doing. All these questions, all these doubts.
You know, all these feelings of lacking. Failings or limitations. It’s what we call sometimes the dark night of the soul. I would tell him my problem and my situation. And as I said, I’m not sure if he understood.
I’m sure he didn’t understand everything I said. He had a rough idea of what perhaps I was going through. And he would always say at the end, begin again. This is a very common expression in Thailand. It’s what what they say no matter what happens.
Begin again, you know. No matter whether your experience was good or bad, whether it was fulfilling, you know, great loss. You just begin again and again. You start off new and as if nothing had happened up to that point. You know, kind of fresh, beginner’s mind.
That nothing has happened. You know we all have our histories. Know all our various experiences, all our various situations that we’ve gone through. You know everyone has their history. Everyone has their story.
And it’s all helped us to shape who we are now to some degree or another. More or had made us to some degree who we are now. But it seems to some degree that we have a choice. The past only goes so far. It comes up only to the present moment.
And within the present moment the future exists as a potential. So we have a choice as to whether to remain victims of our past or to use our past as a learning experience, as a source of growth. And, we have a choice as to whether we’re simply going to allow these compulsive reoccurring patterns to play out our existence again and again and again or we’re simply going to acknowledge what has happened and to begin again, to make new choices, to explore new possibilities, to go beyond the old boundaries, the old limitations which held us back. So we can’t repress our past. We have to acknowledge what’s happened to us, that we can begin to let it go just like these hot dogs.
We don’t either have to repress them or indulge in them. Just acknowledge what’s happened. We need to begin to omit our fear. You know I think we, I think I’ve said that, you know. The essence of cowardice is not to admit one’s fear.
In the process of meditation, allowing things to arise within one’s mind, there’s a certain vulnerability which comes about. But this vulnerability you know, can be looked at from two different aspects. The possibility, you know a stone is not vulnerable. It doesn’t get hurt. But then again it doesn’t feel anything at all.
It doesn’t feel love. It doesn’t feel the meaning of a fulfilled life. There’s no value, no experience. So this question of vulnerability, allowing oneself to come in contact with the hurts and all the fears and everything that has occurred in one’s past history and simply acknowledging that. And to as a consequence, as a response to acknowledging our vulnerability comes a gentleness.
You know the quality when you see a baby. You know it’s very vulnerable. And I think there’s some response when sense that vulnerability of being, that baby. And then certainly the response is gentleness. Becoming gentle with ourselves.
Acknowledging all the negativities within us, all the limitations and faults, shortcomings that we aren’t quite the person that we think we should be, that we ought to be. But being willing simply to acknowledge that and be be accepting and to be gentle with ourselves. Quite often, I think we’re very much hard. We’re harder on ourselves than anyone else. You know I think if we’re going to grow then we have to be open to both.
If we’re going to take the beauty within us we’re going to have to acknowledge the ugliness. It’s like two sides of the same coin. If you’re going to take hold the coin you’re going to take both sides. And simply acknowledge them. You know, all situations are workable and within all situations there’s a potential for growth.
And having the sense that within this process that you’re going to come in touch with not only the negative aspects of yourself but also the positive aspects and being willing to take that as your direction to take refuge in that. To take refuge in the wisdom that’s going to arise within your own mind. The clarity that arises within your own mind. And the gentleness and the love which arises within your own mind as a source of refuge, as a real means of solving your problem. You know, we have to in very much create a path for ourselves, to create a refuge for ourselves.
But there’s no certain way that exists permanently. There is no way set out for us. Moment by moment, we have to find our own way. Some idea or perfection or some perfect way which is set up by someone else is not the true way for us. Each of us must make his own true way.
And when we do that way, we’ll express the universal way. This is the mystery. When you understand one thing through and through, you understand everything. When you try to understand everything, you will not understand anything. The best way is to understand yourself.
So taking refuge in ourselves and understanding ourselves. This kind of reorientation that we have the potential, the capacity to solve our problems if we’re willing to explore. And again, I have a very nice quote. The poem from talking about exploring from TS Eliot. We shall not cease from exploration.
And the end of our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time, through the unknown remembered gate and the last of earth left to discover is that which was the beginning, at the source of the longest river, voice of the hidden waterfall, and the children in the apple tree not known because not looked for, but heard, half-heard, in the stillness between two waves of the sea. Quick now, hear now, always, a condition of complete simplicity costing not less than everything. And all things shall be well and all manner of things shall be well when the tongues of flame are in-folded into the crowned knot of fire and the fire and the rose are one. So, process exploration. You know there’s in a way once you’re a little bit awake, you can’t quite go back to sleep.
The work left to be done is always going to haunt you. So, in that respect, we have no choice. We have to keep exploring. So if we make a conscious choice then it’s going to make our work that much more easy. To begin to learn about ourselves consciously, to commit oneself to constantly learning about yourself, to commit oneself consciously to your own growth and exploring.
This is a direction and it becomes a very important principle in your life. This is going for refuge, a real method to solve our problems. I think it’s the only way we can solve our problems. To the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha, I go for refuge until I am enlightened. Through the merit I create by practicing giving and the other perfections, 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 by practicing giving and the other perfections. 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. To the merit I create by practicing giving and the other perfection, may I attain Buddhahood for the sake of all beings. So, of the Three Principal Aspects of the path, the determination to be free, opening our hearts to others, and seeing deeply into the nature of reality.
We’re looking at the third of these, seeing deeply into the nature of reality. You know when the, when Buddha, he discovered that the experience of suffering is always associated with a strong emotional attachment to a particular type, a particular sense of self, a sense of I, of who we think we might be, this vague sense of self. And there was always this association. There was this connection between the notion of self that we had and our experience of suffering. This attachment to an I, attachment to self, we’re calling grasping itself, ego grasping.
This, what we call reification. Reification means to solidify something, to make it solid, to give it a substantiality which it doesn’t possess naturally. This solidification of the self, of the eye. So, this is the Buddha discovered that there is an association between this solidification of the self, of the I, and suffering. There is some correspondence, some association, some connection, some relationship.
And so, in the process of coming to an understanding of who we are and the causes of our suffering, we have to turn our attention to the nature of the self, the nature of the ego. Turn our attention onto the strong emotional responses associated and the nature of that self. How do we experience the self? Can the self bear analysis? Can the ego bear analysis?
So these kind of questions, this kind of attention, this kind of investigation has to be carried out. So the techniques that we’re using are to gain a cognition, an understanding of selflessness, egolessness, whatever we want to call it, are based upon generating a controlled and well formed contradiction. Controlled and well formed contradiction. If we give these, if we have a requisite commitment to reason, They’re going to force us into realizing a particular viewpoint, a particular attitude, a particular conception has no basis in reality. So we commit ourselves to reason.
We generate well formed controlled contradictions which invalidate a particular attitude, a particular conception, a particular viewpoint and show us that this viewpoint, this attitude has no base in reality, the real world, the actual situation. That it simply grasping at a fantasized notion of things. Really a mental construct about things. It’s a mistaken model, a misconception, a misunderstanding that keeps repeating itself that we’re hanging onto, that we’re attached to. We’re trying to contradict that.
We’re trying to bring it to full awareness and invalidate it to show that it’s not in accordance with the real way of the world, the way things actually exist. This is the way we’re going to investigate, work with, and finally eliminate this grasping at ego which is the basis of suffering which is always associated with the strong emotional responses which are in the nature of suffering. These types of negative responses. You know terms and concepts have a referent object. What I mean by that is they refer to something.
They refer to an object. Terms and concepts refer to an object. Sometimes this reference object exists, sometimes it doesn’t exist. For example, you know, when I think the book, you know, the book is on the table. I think the book is on the table.
The object of that conception, the book and the table, those objects of that conception exist. They can be known by what’s called a valid cognition. People can validly, correctly understand what I’m talking about. That there is a book there. That there is a table there.
That these objects which are being referred to by this conception actually exist in the real world. So these reference objects exist. This conception is valid. There’s nothing wrong with it. It’s not incorrect.
It’s correct. It can be validated. On the other hand, there is conceptions whose reference object, in fact, does not exist. Their object cannot be validated. We can’t find the object which is being referred to by this conceptions.
You know, when I think or I say the book is on the table, I can find what that thought, those words are referring to. I can validate that’s true. The book is on the table. We can agree upon that. It’s the way that things actually exist.
Other types of conceptions, other types of terms, when we look for the reference object, what they’re referring to, we can’t find them. We say there’s something wrong here. You said this but I can’t find it. Maybe I What do you think? No, you can’t find it either.
What do you think? I think you’re wrong. I think that’s a mistaken concept. I can’t find the reference object, what you’re referring to. So some concepts, some attitudes, some ways of thinking have reference objects which in fact don’t exist but we think they do.
We haven’t really looked at the situation carefully enough. Okay, we’ll take an example. We conceive of a striped rope to be a snake. Itis evening, the sun is going down, itis getting a little bit dark. On the side of the sidewalk in the grass, there is this coiled striped rope and you can’t see it very well.
You look and you conceive of that as a snake. So the conception of snake arises in your mind. The reference object of that conception doesn’t exist. The reference object, the object which is being referred to by that conception, conceiving snake does not exist. But we think it does.
Because we think it does, because we believe it does, we generate fear and all the associated emotional responses accompanying that fear. There’s no snake there whatsoever. There’s nothing snake ish about that rope. Nothing whatsoever. But because we’re attached to that conception, the object of that being referred to by that conception as existing.
We incorrectly, unreasonably generate fear and all the emotional responses associated with that It’s a type of reaction response which is based upon a mistake, isn’t it? The mistake doesn’t exist at all. It doesn’t exist at that place where we conceive of it to exist. A valid cognition would apprehend a rope and not snake. It wouldn’t apprehend a snake.
That conception of snake is baseless. That object doesn’t have any correspondence in reality. It is contradicted by a valid cognition, a quickly understanding consciousness which is looking at that same place. The conception of a snake existing at particular place and the conception of a rope existing at the same place are mutually contradictory. A snake and a rope cannot exist at the same place at the same time.
The conception of a snake existing at that place and the conception of a rope existing at that place at the same time are mutually contradictory. That is to say they cannot exist within the same mind at the same time. Just like hot and cold water cannot exist at the same place at the same time. They’re going to cancel each other out. They’re going to neutralize each other.
Conceiving of a snake, we generate fear and all of the emotional responses associated with that fear. But if we are able to generate, you know what we’re talking about, well formed contradictions to that concept. And by investigating that object, trying to see if in fact there is anything which corresponds in reality to that concept, that conception of a snake. We’ll come to understand that our fears are baseless and all the associated emotional responses associated with that fear are baseless and they’re going to dissolve. We’re going to be released from that tension, those fears.