Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 45-minute session, Ven Jampa Gendun opens by asking why determination to be free is insufficient alone: without bodhichitta — the aspiration to enlightenment for others’ sake — renunciation cannot produce its full result. He frames enlightened mind in plain psychological terms: wisdom, compassion, and spontaneous responsiveness. The talk’s central argument is that self-cherishing is an epistemological error, illustrated by contrasting a book titled Getting Mine First with the observable happiness of Mother Teresa and the Dalai Lama. An image of eating ice cream in India while beggars press against the window anchors the point about the rupture between inner life and social self. A Mother Teresa quote — that love, to be true, must hurt — closes the doctrinal portion before a guided loving-kindness meditation expands outward from self to enemy to the entire world.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 10 3 PA 1998 05 13.mp3
UUID: f85fa04e-87a8-4048-9bbd-24dc0d0aa66d
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: Three Principal Aspects of the Path 1988-1990 (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 1998-05-13
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 45.6 minutes
Words: ~4,952
Also, if this thought definitely definitely to leave cyclic existence is not conjoined with generation of complete aspiration to highest enlightenment, it does not become a cause of the marvelous bliss of unsurpassed enlightenment. Thus, the intelligence should generate the supreme altruistic intention to become enlightened. So, if we translate that into English, also it’s difficult. Also, if this thought definitely to leave cyclic existence, this thought to definitely leave cyclic existence, I’ve been calling determination to be free. Maybe it’s a little easier language.
It’s not conjoined with the generation of complete aspiration to highest enlightenment. Maybe that’s clean. Enlightenment, you know, I’ve talked about this a few times. The basic qualities of what we mean by enlightened mind is simply seeing things, the situations, the nature of how things are. Developing a burning desire to benefit others, that is to say, having love and compassion.
And the idea of spontaneous actions working in the world to benefit others. This is like the feeling tone, the feeling quality of an enlightened mind. This is what we mean when we say enlightened mind. It’s like, you know, healthy mind. This is a healthy mind, someone who has some wisdom, some knowledge, someone who has love and compassion, and someone who has some spontaneity in response to the needs of others, acts out, simply as a compassion in one’s life.
And this is what we’re calling a healthy mind, a sane mind. This is our model of sanity, and this is what we call enlightenment. This is what we’re trying to work towards. But we can’t achieve this. It is not possible unless we develop love and compassion, unless we develop the aspiration for it, then we’re never going to then our actions will never become a cause for the happiness, for the fulfillment of the of enlightenment, it says, unsurpassed enlightenment.
So we have to develop an aspiration to open up to others based beyond sentimentality, beyond our romantic notions, something which is based in reason, experience, intuition. I’ve gone over this last few weeks, Some of the reasoning, some of the basis for our own experience, and some of the intuitive aspects of developing of some When you hear about love and compassion, how it begins to vibrate some chord within your own heart, within the depth of your own being, you know, the point of your intuition. Why it’s necessary? It’s that it becomes a necessity if we’re going to develop actualize our full potential of what it means to be a human being. You know, both from the point of view of self and from the point of view of others, that it’s only in enlightenment that their full capacity, our full potential is realized.
So the point of view, from the point of view of self, you know, we have If we approach it, you know, what, existentially from the point of view, we have two aspects to ourself. We have a private, personal, experiential aspect to ourself, which isn’t open to others. It’s the way we experience our life. Then there’s that other aspect to ourself, our public self, our social self, the self which exists in relationship to other people. In one way, we have there are two aspects to ourselves.
In developing these two aspects to ourselves, any type of therapy, holistic therapy, dealing with the whole person, the whole being, any type of spiritual path has to take in account these two aspects of our self. Now these two aspects are developed through opening up to others and seeing deeply into the nature of reality. Why? Because the faults of these two, the difficulties that we experience, that is our own experiential pain and being unable to open up to communicate, to relate with others in a skillful way, are based on two epistemological errors. Epistemology simply means the way we know things, the way we know things.
We know that we’re making some mistakes in the way we know things with respect to ourself and respect to others. Now, know, eventually, when we come to the third path, we’re going to talk about this air with respect to the nature of ourselves, nature of reality. Here, we’re talking about the error with respect to others, with respect to our social self, our social aspect of our self. We believe from the depths of our being, beyond any shadow of doubt, that by placing ourselves first, by placing emphasizing our own happiness above others, that in fact this is a way, this is like the foundation for gaining all our own happiness. That is to say, we believe in the effectiveness of self-cherishing.
And if you like, the effectiveness of selfishness. It’s an effective means of getting your happiness. Selfishness is how you’re going to get your happiness. This me first attitude. They even write books about it, how great it is.
There was a book written in the States, but I can’t remember the title. It actually had the title Getting Mine First. And it was extolling this virtue of you get yours first. This is the way life is. This is where you’re going to bring yourself happiness.
This is antithetical to all the teachings of Christ, Buddha, of any spiritual teachers, who are happy people. As I said, we’d rather believe the guy on television who says, State Bank is going to solve all your problems, or if you use this this deodorant, you’re going to find the man that you’ve always wished for, he’s going to bring you happiness. Rather than believing Mother Teresa, rather than believing the Dalai Lama when who are happy, healthy human beings saying, you know, care about others more than yourself, and you’re going to be happy. You don’t have to worry about it. You know, we would rather believe them, the people on television, the commercial makers who are insane people when it comes down to it, rather than healthy, happy human beings who are expressing in their everyday life this fact of putting others first, dedicating their lives to helping others.
And we’re happy people. That’s strange. We’re very strange creatures. We’re not very rational. One of our irrationalities is having never analyzed this error of always putting ourselves first as a means of getting happiness.
It hasn’t worked up to now. It probably isn’t going to work any better way in the future. So we persist. The other epistemological error is simply what we call ego grasping. Always trying to hold to a concrete, permanent, unchanging, independently existing self identity, self image.
But we’re going to talk about that more later when we come to the third principal aspect of the path. Here we’re talking about this error of self-cherishing. The way we overcome this error is by developing, opening up to others. This is the way we realize the full potential of this social aspect of ourself. So, what Buddhism is saying, overall, what any religion is saying, We have to develop wise hearts and compassionate minds.
And then we have to be totally integrated human beings if we’re going to have a full meaningful life. We can’t go to either of the two extremes and become imbalanced, either seeking our own passive peace or not developing ourselves, wholly being orientated outside of yourself, trying to work in the world to alleviate others and forgetting about developing yourself. This can also be, you know, if we haven’t done our homework, it could be another extreme. If you want to solve the world’s problems, you have to put your own house household, your own individual life in order first. That is somewhat of a paradox.
People have a genuine desire to go beyond their individual cramped lives to benefit the world. But if you do not start at home then you have no hope of helping the world. So the first step in learning how to rule is learning to rule your own household, your own immediate world. There is no doubt that if you do so then the next step will come naturally. If you fail to do so, then your contribution to the world will be future chaos.
And I think we’ve seen that a great deal even in present situations. People have a sincere wish out of the loving compassion to help others, but they simply lack the wisdom, the skill, in order to bring it off correctly. And in fact, they may cause harm. There’s an old saying that the streets in hell are paved with good intentions. Buddhism wouldn’t quite go that far because good intentions are quite skillful in themselves. But if we really want to be of effective benefit, we really have to do our homework.
We have to begin with ourselves in conjunction with working for the benefit of others. We shouldn’t say, you know, okay, I’ll wait till I’m a Buddha, and then I’ll go out and do something for the world. This would not be a, you know, a proper attitude to take. The Dalai Lama has said, you know, within the time frame that we have, within the space that we have, we can devote fiftyfifty. Fifty percent solely to your own development, fifty percent to helping others.
Point is to create some space in your life consciously concerned with benefiting others as a necessity for your own mental health. Part of our growing is learning how to make what what Trungpa Rinpoche says, learning how to make a good cup of tea, a proper cup of tea. In order to make a proper cup of tea, you have to necessary to to study a little bit about the methods for making tea, the various qualities of tea, different types of tea. Learn how long to brew the tea, how to serve the tea properly, and how to wash up when you’re finished. You know, like a Japanese tea ceremony, completely aware.
You know, we we develop a feeling that we know what we’re doing. But because we know ourselves, we don’t have to, we don’t make mistakes. Or if we do make mistakes, it wasn’t it wasn’t because we didn’t seek to know the situation as best we could. You know, we have to study ourselves, study our own mind. What man accomplishes in the outer world is his achievement.
If this achievement in the outer world is no way coincides with his own inner truth, then it creates a rupture in his very existence. For it is not true that he exists only within himself. He also exists a great deal through others by the way he is known to them. Know thyself is not indeed the ultimate maxim. Be known to others is also a vital necessity.
This effort to be known to others reigns supreme throughout the world so that the true nature of my own religion, though deeply rooted in me, cannot remain confined within myself. So now to simply use others as objects for your manipulation, for as means to your ends, to your happiness, is simply to not understand the nature of yourself and the way to your happiness. To see your inner world as separate from how you relate with others, as separate from how you relate with the outer world. And this is the seed of schizophrenia. It becomes a split, this rupture between your own experiential world, this inner aspect of yourself, and the social aspect of yourself, how you relate with others.
There has to be some integration of these two around certain central principles. You know, like eating ice cream and cake in India, it’s very difficult because if you go in a restaurant and there’s some windows and it’s on a busy street and you’re sitting there eating, really indulging yourself. And then all these beggars are outside, you know, maybe they haven’t eaten all day. And you’re in there, you know, you’ve eaten well and now you’re having dessert. And you feel pretty justified.
Mean, you you you work hard for your money and and now you’re enjoying it and you’re on your holiday eating this cake and ice cream. But somehow, it’s difficult to enjoy looking out the window. Usually, you move your chair to somewhere else, not out of sight. But this is much the way our life works. That somehow, you know, how we relate with others can never be divorced of how we’re going to experience our world inside.
We can’t shut off part of ourselves. We’re very much bound to the social aspect of ourself. The social aspect of ourself, its fulfillment is in how it relates to others and relating skillfully with others. Trungpa Rinpoche is talking about basic goodness or basic sanity. You think that you can take a little pinch of basic goodness and keep it in your pocket, So the idea of privacy begins to creep in.
That’s the point at which you need renunciation. Renunciation of the temptation to possess basic goodness. It is necessary to give up a localized approach, a provincial approach, and accept a greater world. So we want to, you know, we want to be kind people, but we want to dole it out very exclusively to the people we like, to the people who are nice to us, to the people who smile at us. You know, there’s in some of the meditation techniques, you know, one of them is developing equality amongst others, equality between yourself and others, and then equanimity amongst all the various types of people, you know, the various superficial appearances that people take.
Some people, you know, there’s one method of meditation where you imagine you’re walking down the street and there’s a line of beggars. And some of the beggars, you know, this this is my actual experience. Some of them are quite nice people. You know, some of some of them say, please, sir, thank you, all the nice words. Some of them are quite friendly, but some of them are really nasty people.
You know? They they don’t they just you know, it’s as if you you get the feeling that they think you owe them a living. They don’t, you know, they just they give. You know, then they really they hold on to you. They grab hold of you.
So there’s some of them are pretty, of them are ugly, some are female, some are male, some are young, some are old, all kinds of shapes, attitudes, sizes. And so you have different feelings. Naturally enough, you look at them from the superficial aspect, you have different feelings. And some of them you want to give to, some of them you just throw away, don’t bother me. And you see this arising in yourself.
But each of them is holding out their hand here. Each of them maybe didn’t eat that day. Each of them has the same need, the same want. But generally, we don’t look beyond the superficial differences. We’ll give to this person.
No. Don’t bother me. We give our money to this person. We base our life on our relationships on these superficial appearances, these superficial levels of discrimination. So, you know, you, for example, through this meditation, we begin to develop at least an attitude of going beneath some of our superficial discriminations based upon superficial appearances and getting to more of the essential qualities of people, that everyone wants to be happy, that no one wants to suffer.
Exactly equal. No difference whatsoever. Every person in this room, without a doubt, you know. Even the men want to be happy and don’t want to suffer. I’ve been talking to a lot of feminists these days.
I don’t know. There’s some good points, but I have to be careful. Because men also have their problems. There’s this I don’t know. It’s an old saying, guess.
It’s not very old. It’s probably fairly modern. But we can learn to love others by learning how to love one person. And I have a feeling, I don’t know, I haven’t I have a feeling the way we learn to live one we can only really love one person until we love everybody. Until there’s there’s no there’s no longer any exclusivity in our love.
It’s just loving human beings, wanting wanting others to be happy. Then we can properly love one other human being, I think. Otherwise, at best, it’s going to be mixed with attachment. There’s going to be expectations. There’s going to be provincialism.
There’s going to be your own self referencing. It’s going to be your ego trip in some way. But once we can learn to really love, unconditional generosity, just loving our environment, loving anyone we meet, wanting them to be happy, then we can begin to really, I think, to love one person properly. So one of the qualities that I talked about with respect to enlightened mind was this idea of spontaneity. You know, it’s one of the most It’s a very desirable quality, isn’t it?
Generally, we’re always There’s always this guy looking over our shoulder, you know, watching everything we do. We’re always checking up, make sure we don’t goof up or something, that everything goes well. But sometimes when we act very positively in a spontaneous way, you know, you’re so happy to see someone, you run, you don’t even think about it. Feels good. If you give something spontaneously, some spontaneous action, which is positive, it’s a very fulfilling experience.
This is what doesn’t happen. The exact opposite begins to happen with schizophrenia. There’s always this checking up to the point where he sees a split between his inner self and his outer self. He thinks, I don’t want to be doing this. I’m doing this just for show, for public display.
I really want to be doing something else. It becomes a total rupture between the inner world and his outer world. The way he experiences the world and the way he expresses himself to the outer world. One of the marks of mental unhealthiness, this quality of schizophrenia. We have to begin to develop a healthy mind, we have to begin to integrate our inner world and how we express ourselves to our outer world.
There has to be a one to one correspondence. This is the quality of spontaneity. You know, this is the way we can develop to heal the split, is by opening up to others, by no longer seeing others as either a threat or as a means to manipulate for one’s own happiness. Begin to see the necessity to make others happy, to begin to develop love and compassion for others, wanting others to be happy, not wanting them to suffer, wanting them to be separated from their suffering. So we have to As a foundation, we have to develop the determination to be free, to develop ourselves.
And based upon this foundation, we’re going to take two directions. One of them is to develop the wisdom aspect of ourselves, and the other is the method. And method by method here we mean love and compassion. This is the way we fulfill our potential. But without first coming into contact with our own difficulties, developing a determination for ourselves to grow, then we have no real foundation to develop these two aspects of ourselves.
We have to make some effort in both of these areas Seeing deeply in the nature of reality and how we relate with others by opening up to others, developing love and compassion as a necessity for our own mental health. Also, this cultivation through meditation, next week we’re going to start talking about the actual techniques, the methods for opening up to others, the various lineages. There’s two main lineages. One coming down from the Buddha, then to Maitreya, Asaṇga, and the other coming from the Buddha down through Mañjuśrī and down to Śāntideva, methods whereby we can actually develop love and compassion. We can develop this aspiration to develop ourselves in order to benefit others.
But even outside of our meditation, we have to, in some practical, real way, be willing to give up a little bit of our own privacy. We’re very much Westerners are very much attached to their privacy, to their own space. It’s either larger or greater, but there is always some space, and we don’t want people to invade our territory. Know, our cocoon is what it amounts to. So we have to, in some practical way, begin to forego some of our privacy and begin to share our cocoon with other people, just in some small way for short intervals of some time.
So, you know, we we are constantly recreating our basic patterns of behavior. You know, this is the theme of the ego. This is what I’ve been coming back to again and again. We all have our particular style of suffering. We’re very connected with that style.
Our whole environment, whole way of acting, entire behavior pattern supports that style. We keep recreating a particular way, a pattern of behavior, a pattern of thought. In order to We have to make some leaps from time to time into fresh air, onto fresh ground. It’s not easy, We have to sort of build up our confidence to make small leaps, to take chances. Growth only comes through vulnerability, taking chances.
In some small ways, it doesn’t have to be earth shaking. I was talking to a psychologist, and one way he works with his patients, he asks them every time they visit to do something unusual that week, something they’ve never done before. They promise to do some specific unusual thing. This is the way you can begin to break up this constant repeating maintenance of these particular unskillful patterns simply by leaping onto fresh ground into the fresh air. So in some way, we have to take a chance.
So it’s not easy to open up to others. What is it? Someone said, it’s difficult to constantly be loving, but it’s even more difficult not to love at all. Intellectually, we may want to grow intellectually, but basically we probably don’t. This is why it’s necessity to first develop the determination to be free, not mere intellectual exercise, curiosity, but from a very deep source, have the determination I’ve got to change, seeing into your own existence, your own suffering.
If I don’t change, this whole pattern is going to continue. It’s hopeless. If we really want to grow But growth entails taking a greater responsibility. Responsibility not only for yourself, but for others. And we’re very much afraid of this responsibility.
Responsibility for your own happiness, for your own suffering, that it’s your fault, whether you’re happy or not. And also taking responsibility for others for helping them. This idea of taking responsibility can hurt. This is a kind of very I mean, it’s a very Christian quotation. It’s from Mother Teresa.
It’s the idea of hurt. It is not enough for us to say, I love God, but I did not love my neighbor. Saint John says, You are a liar if you say you love God and you don’t love your neighbor. How can you love God whom you do not see if you do not love your neighbor whom you see, whom you touch, with whom you live. So it is very important for us to realize that love, to be true, has to hurt.
It hurt Jesus to love. It hurt Jesus to love us. It hurt him. That was Mother Teresa. The reason I bring that up is not because to bring into the idea of Jesus or God, just to emphasize the fact that it would be a great mistake that if you think to grow or to travel a spiritual path, it simply involves the avoidance or simply involves the avoidance of pain and problems.
Very much in fact, if we’re going to grow, we have to be willing to invite problems, invite pain. And this is very much a part of a spiritual path, not the avoidance of pain and problems. That’s the intelligence should generate the supreme altruistic intention to become enlightened. So we’ll stop there. And then we have a meditation on loving kindness at the end.
So if you’ll sit comfortably. For a moment consider your own difficulties, your own problems, and the fact that you want to be happy. No matter what you may have done in the past, no matter what mistakes you may have created, you can simply regret them and determine not to repeat them again in the future. However you may conceive of yourself, whatever identity you may hold to, you can change. You can become anything that you want to be.
You can begin again. But just for the moment, for the present, we have to accept ourselves, all the various parts of ourselves, even the parts we don’t like, and have compassion for all those various parts. So just make friends with yourselves and be gentle on yourself and wish yourself happiness. Just direct positive feelings towards yourself. May I be happy.
May I not suffer. May I grow. May I be well. Simply direct positive feelings towards yourself. Now think of someone that you like, that you love, someone of the same sex, and imagine that person in front of you.
If you can’t see them, it doesn’t matter, just feel that that person is there. Simply remember all the good times you’ve shared together, all the happiness, all the kindness that this person has shown you. Direct the positive feelings which naturally arise, feelings of concern, wanting this person to be happy. Just radiate out these positive feelings towards that person. May you be happy, may all good things come to you, may all your desires be fulfilled, just pleasant thoughts, good feelings.
Now think of someone that you neither like nor dislike, a stranger. Imagine that person in front of you. I want to go beneath the superficial appearances that we usually judge people by, whether they’re beautiful or ugly, whether they’re male or female, rich or poor, educated, uneducated. Try to go beneath all these appearances to the essence of that person. There’s someone there who wants to be happy and doesn’t want to suffer exactly like yourself.
Beneath it all is someone just like yourself. And just as we wish our own self happiness and not to suffer, begin to wish this person the same that you wish for yourself. Because how we feel about this person deep down is very much a reflection of how we essentially feel about ourselves. Just wish them happiness. Now think of someone who you have problems with, disturbs your mind, an enemy, someone you don’t like.
Imagine that person in front of you. This person wants to be happy and doesn’t want to suffer just like yourself. Perhaps their method of finding their happiness, eliminating their suffering, has come in conflict with your method of finding your happiness, eliminating your suffering. This is the conflict of interest, yours and theirs. You’ve hurt others either intentionally or unintentionally in the past to find the happiness that you were looking for.
Now, this person has done the same to you. So if we’re ever to begin to forgive ourselves for the mistakes that we’ve made, we have to begin to forgive this person for making mistakes just like ourselves. So just for the moment set aside your grudge, your hurt, your anger, and see someone very much like yourself. Someone who’s trying the best they can to get some happiness out of life and being very confused about how to go about it and making a lot of mistakes along the way and wish them happiness. Now imagine all four of these people together, yourself and these three others.
When you look at these three, usually you feel close to one, distant from another. But try to see them all from the point of view of wanting happiness and not wanting to suffer. Try to see them all equal, that they’re all equal in this respect. And without any bias, radiate out positive feelings to all four equally, wishing them happiness. And all the people in this room, Taking responsibility for their happiness, for their lives, trying to develop themselves.
Radiate out positive feelings to everyone in the room. May you be happy, may you find everything that you’re seeking, may you grow, help others to grow, love and be loved. Let’s radiate out positive feelings, good feelings to everyone in the room. And all the people on the block watching television, cooking, eating, getting ready for bed. They’re all looking for happiness, whatever they’re doing, whatever they’re saying.
Radiate up happiness to everyone on the block, touching them, fulfilling their wishes. And all the people in Adelaide, people in their cars and buses walking on the streets in their homes, Just keep radiating out, spreading out further and further, extending out this wish of happiness, of caring. Extending out further and further, opening your heart to all of South Australia, all the people, animals, insects. And further, radiating out further, Alice Springs, Perth, Darwin, Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne, Canberra, Hobart, the entire country. Spreading out further and further.
New Zealand radiating out positive feelings. The entire southern hemisphere, further and further, enveloping the entire world in your heart, and it is carrying all the people, black, white, red, yellow, all the animals, the insects, everything that lives on