Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 21-minute talk, Ven Jampa Gendun opens with an arresting claim: that awareness of your own confusion is itself evidence of basic sanity — contrasting it with a psychotic who cannot recognise his own sickness, and for whom healing cannot begin. From there he argues that suffering functions as intelligence, prompting the journey toward realising one’s potential, and that the foundational step on the path is consciously choosing to believe in your own Buddha nature. He draws on a verse from Nāgārjuna’s Praise of the Element of Qualities and a Dalai Lama passage on courageous determination, before closing with a guided visualisation: taking on qualities admired in others, converting negative self-images into their positive counterparts, and picturing the person one intends to become. Accessible to newcomers with no assumed prior study.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 10 3 PA 1990 03 30.mp3
UUID: e21f01b8-2615-4640-967a-5c2da3a6ab6b
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: Three Principal Aspects of the Path 1988-1990 (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 1990-03-30
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 21.0 minutes
Words: ~1,628
As a way of becoming unstuck, developing determination to be free determination to be free from these disturbing patterns. I am not these patterns. These patterns are obscuring my own basic goodness, my own ability to solve my problems, my own exuberance for life, my own wholeness. As a foundation of the path, we’re acknowledging our basic goodness. Maybe it becomes initially It must be simply a matter of belief.
One chooses to believe. That’s quite profound, I think, to choose to believe. I think we do that more than we are aware of. We choose to believe. But here we can perhaps do it consciously.
I choose to believe that I am much more than I have ever imagined myself to be. That I have the power and the means and the ability and the intelligence to solve my problems. This is like the foundation of the path that I have Buddha nature. If we do not You know, if we didn’t if we did not have this basic sanity, if we didn’t possess this basic sanity, we would not be able to appreciate the possibility of growth. We would not be able to appreciate another way another possibility the possibility of another way of being, for example.
So we acknowledge the starting point of the path is our own confusion and pain. Your suffering is your truth. It’s like an intelligence because it acts as inspiration for growth, for setting out on a journey to realize your potential. Your awareness of your suffering, of your confusion is an awareness of your basic sanity because you know that you’re suffering. You know that you are confused.
And this this knowing is your own basic sanity. This ability to know that in itself is your own basic sanity. If you don’t know, it’s like a psychotic who doesn’t know he’s insane. He’s lost. There’s no hope.
But once the therapist is able to point out his self defeating behavior patterns, his disconnection with the reality of the situation, then some insight takes place and begins to become aware he’s not acting appropriately. He becomes aware of his sickness. That is to say, he begins to use his intelligence, his basic sanity to bear on that healing of his own mind. So the first step is this awareness of our own basic sanity in seeing our problems, that we do see our problems.
And this is a sign of our basic sanity, our basic goodness. You know, we are are precious because we possess Buddha nature. But additionally, we are vulnerable because we are confused and because we are compassionate. So we must be gentle with ourselves because if we because we are confused, because we are compassionate, and we have to be also courageous because we are future Buddhas. So the Dalai Lama said, If we realize I am a human being, a human being can do anything.
This determination, courage, and self confidence are important sources of victory and success. Without willpower and determination, even something that you might have achieved easily cannot be accomplished, cannot be achieved. If you have willpower and reasonable courage, not blind courage, but not courage with a type of courage that is without pride. Even things which seem impossible at a certain stage turn into being possible because of the continuing effort inspired by that courage. Thus, determination is very important.
So we need a consistent, gentle determination to be all that we can be, to all that we know we can be. You’re believing in ourself and acknowledging our pain brings believing in our self, acknowledging our pain brings infinite love. And it brings some kind of patience to endure and a longing to be free and to be ourselves. So we’ve always we’ve always tried the best we could. And what we couldn’t what we couldn’t be, you know, we can we can determine to become.
And everyone is very much like ourselves, acknowledging that everyone is doing the best they can. Given that person’s history, that person couldn’t be any other way than the way they are at this very moment. It doesn’t mean that You know, in dealing with a person, if you look to their patterns, you may not like their patterns. You may get angry at their patterns, but the person is not their patterns. Beginning to distinguish between the two and beginning to respect the basic goodness, the intelligence, and integrity of everyone just like yourself.
The Buddhas and the Buddhas of the past, present, and future due to their love and compassion work only for the welfare of sentient beings because all sentient beings possess Buddha essence. The Buddhas and bodhisattvas guard with care all sentient beings as if they were jewels of their own heart. And then there’s a quotation, a verse from Nāgārjuna’s text Praise of the Element of Qualities. Because all beings possess the element of Buddha, the actions of Buddhas and Bodhisattvas are like mining gold ore. If they did not possess the element of Buddha, the actions of Buddhas and bodhisattvas would simply result in their own hardships.
We should protect, love, and have compassion for all sentient beings. We should train in pure appearance by seeing them as our teachers and loved ones. And we should replace harmful intentions with feelings of respect and caring. All this, ultimately, because all beings possess Buddha nature. And just one other quote from this text, praise of this element of qualities.
It is not because enlightenment is far or extremely near or because it moves here and there, but because it lies shrouded in a veil of afflictive emotions, it remains unrealized. So, yeah, this is quite remarkable, I think, a reoccurring theme especially within the great vehicle that that we have moments or glimpses of our own Buddha nature, moments of our own glimpses of our own unconditional goodness, and that within ourselves is this enlightenment. And you know, I talked about the qualities of enlightenment in very simple terms of this wisdom which understands the way things actually are, love and compassion, and this exuberance for life, this spontaneous exuberant generosity. And this is within ourselves and it’s simply because it is obscured by some disturbing pattern. So the if we can believe in that, choose to believe in it, then perhaps we can develop gain some kind of inspiration from that and determine simply to remove these patterns, to grow out of these patterns, to emerge out of them.
You know, we aren’t the ordinary limited insufficient people that we usually conceive of ourselves to be, that we are potential Buddhas. That is to say, potential loving, sane, healthy human beings. No matter if you are a man or a woman or whether you’re smart or stupid, you’re still potential Buddha. You have to you know, you are your own best friend. You know yourself best.
All your weaknesses, all your strength, you know your your past history. And if you begin to look in that history, you may be able to see a history of sanity. You know, beginning to understand who you are now and that you have all the material to be all that you could ever hope to be, all that perhaps you could ever possibly imagine imagine yourself to be. I think I’ll stop there. Do a short meditation.
If you’d like to maybe stay up for a minute and then sit back down. Just to begin to to perhaps gain some insight into the possibility of changing the image that we have of ourselves That we usually have very much stuck in a particular image. We can play and actually feel that we are have different qualities than we normally conceive of ourselves as having, then we perhaps we can develop some flexibility and some gap might open up to allow ourselves to express that quality, which is probably dormant within us anyway, but we don’t acknowledge. So think of someone that you admire, someone that you respect. And then what is it about them that you respect so much?
What quality? What characteristic? And then try to assume, take on, imagine, play a role that you yourself has that same quality, that same characteristic which you now admire in this other person. And imagine yourself in a situation where you express this same exact quality. And others admire and respect you as you do now this other person.
So play a role. Use your imagination and take on this quality and express it in a situation. And appreciate yourself for having that quality. Now think of some negative quality which you possess, something you don’t like about yourself. And imagine that you have the the opposite counterpart, the positive aspect, the positive counterpart to that negative quality.
And imagine play a role where you now have this positive quality and you express it. And then think of some positive quality, something you like about yourself. And now imagine that that quality is even greater fully developed. And play a role and imagine a situation where you express this now fully developed positive quality. And then consider what type of person would I like to be ten years from now, five years from now?
And what qualities would I like to have? What are the obstacles to developing those qualities to becoming that type of person I’d like to be. What what’s stopping me? And what are you doing to remove those obstacles? What are you doing in your day to day life to try to become that person that you want to be?
So I’ll stop there. I was asked to make an announcement about there’s a retreat coming up.