Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 37-minute session, Ven Jampa Gendun builds an argument for personal responsibility around a striking claim: each of us holds karmic connections so intimate that we can benefit certain individuals more than any Buddha or the Dalai Lama ever could. He traces how crisis and emotional pain push us out of the cocoon of selfishness toward genuine commitment, then works through the exceptional resolve — the fifth cause in the sevenfold cause-and-effect method for generating bodhicitta — explaining that the very inability to help others is what should drive us to develop wisdom and compassion. A Q&A follows on how to recognize an awakening heart and whether mistakes are acceptable when motivation is pure. The session closes with a guided equanimity meditation on friend, enemy, and stranger, gently loosening the grip of those labels.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 10 3 PA 1989 03 10.mp3
UUID: da7505f3-309f-452f-8ab2-894935500824
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: Three Principal Aspects of the Path 1988-1990 (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 1989-03-10
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 37.0 minutes
Words: ~3,676
So it’s a reorientating yourself as a means of transformation. You know, taking refuge in Buddha, realizing that human beings like ourselves have transformed themselves. And we acknowledging the fact that we have everything that we need right now within us. But thereby relying on our own mind, own exertion, our own practice, and there’s no reason that we cannot do what those on the path have done. My refuge to the Dharma, you know, the teachings, the means, the methods, which help to give expression to these potentials that we have in us ourselves, our basic intelligence, our our brilliant sanity, you know, tender heartedness, if you like.
So using the basic using the dharma as a basic guideline, kind of our reference and helping us to begin to work with our emotions and our relationships. And then there’s the Sangha, a spiritual community. Beginning to understand that there are people who are trying to practice in the same way that we’re trying to practice. And they’re trying to practice the path of heart. And helping each other on our own, you know, our own very individual unique journey.
So it’s through such types of confidence that we are able to develop the courage to to make the journey, to to embark on the noble path of of the bodhisattva and through the inspiration of of our teachers. You know, we don’t we don’t come to the path freely of our own choice as it may appear. It requires a great deal of feelings of the unmanageability of our life. You know, some perhaps some deep crisis, emotional pain, And this almost forces out of ourselves, out of our rut, you know, out of our apathy, out of our our sleep. You know, we’re very much attracted to our cocoons.
You know, our cocoons are are selfishness, for example. And we’re afraid of selflessness so we have to somehow, you know, step out of ourselves. So this, you know, the quality of stepping out, the quality of growth. You know, fundamentally means broadening our perspective outside of ourselves, our horizons, and deepening the our inner life, the depths of our own being. You know there’s an there’s a going out, an expansion, and a going in and deepening quality.
The way we can begin to expand in the sense of opening our hearts is to expand the realm of our activities of our involvement with others, you know, beyond the limited narrow range of our ego’s territory. And our whole life is dedicated to the absolute commitment to bring pleasure to this one thing, our own ego. How many times in your life have you ever done something not for your own ego, that we have to try to begin to expand our horizons beyond that very extremely limited horizon and beyond those we like, those who are helpless, those we’re attached to. And ultimately, you know, someday to include all sentient beings within that that horizon, that perspective, and also the deepening quality, you know, of our love and compassion, deepening through these various levels of how wonderful it would be, I wish, I will take responsibility.
So I’m going through some of these ideas very quickly, very roughly. And in fact, you know, we we can’t we can’t think that we’re helpless. We can’t think, well, the Buddhas will do it, or the teachers will do it, or the Dalai Lama will do it, or another Mother Teresa will do it. But in fact, you know, we have unique relationships with certain individuals that in fact, and you all know this from your own experience, that sometimes it’s a simple smile from us, a simple gesture, a simple kindness on our part can influence another person in a significant way. Can make them can make can change their you know, make their whole day, if you like.
But we have these these relationships, these karmic affinities with others to the extent that of our ability to influence them is extremely powerful. More powerful than the the Buddhas. More powerful than the Dalai Lama’s. More powerful than the Mother Teresas. You know, we talk about Śākyamūni Buddha as being the fourth universal teacher of this eon.
They said there will be a thousand. Now why do we call it, you know, there are infinite number of Buddhas, but why do we call certain individuals universal teachers? It’s because they build up such a vast karmic affinity with such a vast number of beings that their ability to to influence the minds of others is so great that they would call them a universal teacher. But the fact is that your area of influence, your sphere of operation is such that with certain people you can be of more positive benefit or negative benefit too than all the Buddhas, all the Bodhisattvas. So you can’t say, you know, it’s not up to me.
It’s up to the Buddhas out there. It’s up to the Dalai Lama, the Bodhisattvas, and all those three. Because you have your unique karmic relationship. It might be extremely limited. It might be only one other person that you’re able to influence either negatively or positively.
But you know that person can be influenced by you just by simple, you know, smile, simple gestures, simple frowns, you know. And so that’s that’s your area of working. That’s your that’s your area of influence, your sphere of involvement, you know. But we can begin to work out from that. But we have to begin there with the with those you have a unique karmic relationship with.
And so we can’t excuse ourselves from becoming involved and think it’s it’s up to somebody else. You know, this person’s happiness may very well depend upon what you do and what you say. That you you might be the one person who has the karmic ability to influence this person for the positive their positive their own positive benefit. You have this unique capacity, relationship with this person. And this is your responsibility.
So we we try to develop love. We you know, I wish, you know, perhaps Lama Yeshe was here, and then he could talk with you. He could inspire you. I can sort of just repeat some of the words that he he used to speak the way my I can only repeat the words that most of my teachers the way they spoke. You know, committing yourself.
The idea is committing yourself, dedication, opening your heart as the most available, efficient, effective means for finding happiness, to becoming everything that you can become. You know, for me it doesn’t. It just sounds perhaps rather hollow. I don’t know. But, you know, this is what he says here.
I’m repeating what my teachers told me. It says that in the script. So I I repeat repeat it. You know, it’s they used to call it love and compassion. It’s like the in in alchemy, it’s referred to as the elixir which changes lead to gold, base metal to gold.
You know, this quality of love and compassion of opening your hearts to others. But we now we want to take our compassion and we want to we want to possess it. And we want to take our basic goodness and keep it in our pocket and take it out at certain on certain occasions when it’s safe or when it’s convenient, with certain people that we like. And then we don’t want to keep our heart open. We don’t want to remain vulnerable.
And therefore, these are the this is the type of life that we end up with. This is Śāntideva’s point. You know, this is the type of life that you’re going to end up with, the type of life that we experience now, if that’s the type of life that you want. You know we are our lives and are very much marked by the qualities of what? Hollowness, conflict, doubt, hesitation.
You know, we feel really feeling vulnerable, isolated. So in all this seeming reasonableness, and we’re all reasonable creatures aren’t we? Leading our reasonable lines. Waking up at reasonable hour in the morning, put on your reasonable clothes and you go to your reasonable job. Everything’s quite reasonable and it’s we’ve lost you know our dignity.
We’ve gotten out of very much out of touch with our dreams, with our ideas, you know, in trying to in trying to protect our territory, in trying trying to find some kind of a sense of personal security. We’ve become very much poverty stricken and afraid. I think that I think that’s the situation that we exist in. In all our seeming reasonableness that we approach our life with, we’ve ended up poverty stricken and afraid. There’s no dedication.
There’s just unending calculations. There’s no there’s no wholeness. There’s only fragmentation. So maybe I’m being too tough on you guys. I know.
I kept I I was reading I had been reading this book this week about lamas. And and the idea of yeah. Of dedication. Yeah. Of opening your heart.
Of commitment. As otherwise, my lives are gonna be hollow, rather purposeless, rather meaningless, full of doubt, hesitation, and all our seeming reasonableness, trying to find the key, constantly struggling to find the happiness, satisfaction that we’re looking for. We keep missing the point perhaps. But maybe it still sounds unreasonable. So, in conclusion, I think all all of my teachers, yeah, they’re asking us to make some kind of commitment.
You know, the commitment is to taking the ideas of love and compassion, wisdom, benefiting others as a central principle of your life, as an experiment, just trying, just continually reorientating your life in that direction. That’s all. Just reorientating your life, making those small choices during the course of your day, you know, rather than reacting with anger trying to, you know, at least be patient and if possible develop kindness, rather than being closed and holding to you, opening up and letting go a little bit. And of course, you know, our everyday day, reorientating in that direction. And it did there’s no there’s no necessity for any heavy handedness.
There’s no it shouldn’t be a matter of conflict or struggle. Just simply, you know, keep pointing your cart north if you want if that’s direction in fact that you want to go. You know, Lama Yeshe would always talk about totality. You know, he used to have his way with English language, you know, he never quite sure what he was talking about sometimes. He used to twist around.
It was very poetic in a way. He’d talk to all of you. Your lives are completely fragmented, and you’re completely full of conflict, inner conflict, outer conflict. There’s no totality. There’s no dedication.
There’s no commitment. So he talks about all beings, all suffering, resolve within oneself to live the life of a Bodhisattva. Then there’s a total integration of all your energy, your heart, and your mind revolved around one central principle. There’s a feeling of wholeness, of holiness, and healing, and help. This is the idea of altruism.
You’re finally doing something beyond your own egotistical ends. But what can I do? Yeah. We’re talking about this fifth cause, exceptional resolve. Now the initially, it begins with, I’m going to help this person.
I’m going to take responsibility. Now if I don’t help this person, who is? If I don’t help my mother, who is? Now I have this special relationship. Or this is the person that’s confronting me now.
There’s no other moment than now. But how can I help? I can’t even help myself to go beyond suffering. How can I help another person? What do I do?
And develop the exceptional resolve. And the exceptional resolve sometimes talked about a special attitude. I can’t even help. I I actually experienced this today, you know? You you get to the place where, you know, you can’t I mean, if you had lots of money, you could help people materially.
But you see that you can’t there’s a limit to that. Right? Even that doesn’t help in all occasions, money, material qualities. If somebody’s suffering, somebody’s in pain, somebody’s going through some problems, sometimes there are sometimes these problems, these pains are temporary aberrations. It’s it’s it’s not a it’s not an under an ongoing theme of their life.
But when you see it is, it’s just not something that is temporarily going to go away, that tomorrow that, you know, they’re going to be happy, but this theme, this quality, this there’s patterns are going to repeat again somewhere down the line, again and again and again. And you say, what can I do? I can’t do anything. You know, if I had more power, more understanding, if I could inspire them, if I could point them toward it, if I could direct them. You know, if I was a happy, healthy, sane human being, if I had some wisdom, real love, real compassion, then I could help them.
You know, then it would come to me. I would have the skill, the ability, the capacity to be able to really benefit them. I could connect with them, help them solve their problems once and for all. And then all I can do now is put my arm around them and give them a cuddle. Maybe that’s good for, you know, five minutes, ten minutes.
But I can’t spend my life, the rest of my life cuddling them, can I? Is this not possible? They’re going to have to leave. They’re going to have to confront their problems, the issues by themselves. So you develop this exceptional resolve, that for, you know, for the sake of others, and all these people that I would like to help, that I have to, you know, get myself together, get my own act together, develop my my skill, my understanding of the nature of the mind, the nature of the ego, how problems evolve, wisdom, that I have to develop the qualities of love and compassion.
Going out outside of myself, becoming involved in other people’s problems more and more, becoming more universal in my perspective, develop the qualities of spontaneous activity, creative energy. To become a happy, healthy, loving, sane human being for the benefit of others so that I can help them do the same is the exceptional resolve. in dependence upon this, there arises the awakening heart, bodhicitta, the mind of enlightenment. There is nothing more noble in the hearts of humankind that has ever been created than the thought to dedicate one’s life for the benefit to help others. And this that’s the that’s the first system, the sevenfold cause and effect method.
I’m not gonna be able to I won’t yeah. I won’t start this the second tradition tonight, the equality of self and others. I’ll review that tomorrow, next week. Do you have any questions? Any questions?
Yeah. This question may do nothing but sort of entirely betray my own ignorance. But how does one know when you’re getting results? You talk about the awakening heart. How do you know when your heart is awakening?
That’s a good question. You know, the what the main cause in awakening heart is compassion. That’s the main cause. Then by compassion, simply on various levels, but most simply the wish, may you not suffer. So the degree that you’re you’re concerned with others, that they’re in their problems, that you’re sensitive, aware to their problems, and wishing them that that that they not suffer, that they and and the degree of involvement you’re willing to put in to helping them or whether directly or indirectly.
Whether it means indirectly, but by that I mean whether you think, well, I’ve got to study more, I have to meditate more, I have to practice more, or directly, I’ve got to go out there and give them some time, give them some energy, give them a cuddle, you know, whatever they need. You know, lamas, spiritual teachers, they have various methods of dealing with problems. Sometimes a a student needs a good cuddle, a kind word. Sometimes they need a good scolding, you know, to get them unstuck. Sometimes they need a teaching, very rationally, very logical.
So but they’re all expressions of compassion. Yeah. I was going to say that what often holds me back from helping others is just a sort of very deep qualm that I don’t really know what would be effective. You know, if I I mean, is there something in this that supplies you with some sort of deeper sort of knowledge? I think that’s a good question.
I mean, it’s a good that’s a good qualm to have. Because you’re right. Until we are Buddhas, we’re going to make mistakes. We don’t know, do we? So that should act as a source of inspiration for us to get ourselves more and more together, to develop more and more wisdom, more and more skills so that we don’t we know what to do.
We know how to effectively help each person. This is why one must become a Buddha, to know exactly what this particular person needs at this particular time. But may in fact, that is the case. But it should not as the Dalai Lama has said, we’re going to make mistakes in helping other people. But it’s okay to make mistakes if the motivation is compassion.
If you have a positive motivation, then you have to do something. And it’s okay. But that should be qualified with the understanding that I may make a mistake now, but I should work to the point of developing myself. I’m not going to make these mistakes all the time. I’m going to make fewer mistakes.
I’m going to become more skillful, more effective. It’s okay to make mistakes, you know, if your if your motivation is positive. But again, trying to develop yourself so you make less mistakes in the future. Alright. Can I say just one more?
Yeah. Please. I used to spend quite a bit of time at a Baptist Coffee Lounge, and I was sort of routinely exposed to various people who came in off the street and all this kind of thing. And the feeling of just complete helplessness you get when you’re confronted with someone who’s got, you know, well, just these huge problems. Feeling complete helplessness you get is quite, you know, it’s quite amazing.
You sort of sit there stunned. All all you could all you can do is offer them a cup of coffee and try to get them to very generally talk about it, you know. Fantastic. Very simple. I have to become more skillful than that.
Anybody have a question? Anybody have an answer? No? Okay. Maybe we can meditate.
Just sit comfortably. So we’ll meditate on on the equanimity meditation. Equanimity, trying to develop an some flexibility, not holding on to these labels of friend, enemy, stranger quite so tightly, seeing that they’re arbitrary and they’re easily changeable. So, you know, as best you can, just have a feeling or imagine in front of you on your right side is someone that you like a great deal, someone that you love, a friend. In the middle is a stranger, someone you feel indifferent to.
And on your left is an enemy, someone you dislike. You know, perhaps you can’t see them. It doesn’t matter. Just just feel that they’re there. That’s just the important quality of the meditation, feeling that these three are there.
And then looking to your friend, the the person that you like, that you love, remembering some of the things, the happiness that they brought to you, kindness, really developing this sense of caring, liking as much as possible. And why is it that you care for this person so much? And if we begin to analyze, is it because they treat you kindly? Because they give you things? Because they’re nice to you?
Or nice to someone that you love? They gave something to someone that you love? But haven’t they hurt you? Haven’t they ever spoken harshly to you? Been unkind to you?
This very same person. Then the person on your left, the enemy. Now why is it that you dislike this person so much? Is it because they hurt you or took something away from you? Said harsh things to you or someone to someone that you love?
Can you remember times that they gave you something, that they were kind to you, that they spoke they spoke very sweetly to you? If you can’t remember them, can you imagine that they say these things, that they do these things to you? And the person in the middle. Why do you feel indifference toward this person? It’s because they’ve neither helped you or hurt you.
They’ve neither spoken kindly to you or harshly. Can you imagine some small gesture on this person’s part, some kindness, some few nice words, A gift. So though you have may have different feelings toward each of these three, so they may appear very much differently to you. That holding them as friend, enemy, and stranger. But these categories, these labels constantly changing.
They’re arbitrary. And though you might want to be with one and not the other, still you can have positive regard, a feeling of equality toward all all three without any bias or prejudices, a feeling that they’re all worthwhile, a feeling of respect, consideration. And then we’ll dedicate the positive energy that we create. 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 body mind not yet born arise and grow.
May that born have no decline, but increase forevermore.