Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Opening with a guided “choiceless awareness” meditation — letting the mind drift freely to any object while quietly noting it — Ven Jampa Gendun frames practice as a revolution against modern culture’s demand that we externalize ourselves. In this 47-minute session, he maps the three principal aspects of the path (determination to be free, opening the heart, seeing into reality) against both personal ego-defending suffering and the deeper existential suffering that no psychotherapy can reach. Drawing on Robert Johnson’s observation that any emotional investment in how we describe another person almost always signals projection, he argues we rarely see others as they actually are. He then focuses on the Hearer’s philosophical level — the unconscious belief in a singular, unchanging self, illustrated by the rope mistaken for a snake in dim light — and closes by outlining four philosophical rungs toward emptiness and dependent arising.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 11 3 PA 1989 09 15.mp3
UUID: 0d00be65-de0b-42d6-962d-f020bdad4088
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: 46.8 minutes
Words: ~4,773
We usually start the evening talk with the meditation. I recommend very much that make use of the simple practice of mindfulness of breathing. It’s a very straightforward practice. Won’t get sidetracked into some exotic notions about perhaps what meditation is. That we have to actually confront ourselves very directly and very realistically.
Confusion and the chaos which is just beneath the surface when we attend to our inner world. You know this society, the culture is demanding very much that we externalize ourselves. So meditation is a revolution. Revolt against that externalizing process and beginning to become re in touch with our internal life, with who in fact we are. To begin to learn about ourselves, to get to know ourselves.
I think you have to do this. I’m sure you have to do this if you’re ever going to solve your problems in a deep manner, in a realistic manner. You know, we don’t know we don’t operate our minds very well because we don’t know how they operate. We don’t act very skillfully because we don’t know how the various influences which are bringing about our actions. A great bulk of our motivations, our influences are present unaware to us because we are very much unconscious, unawake.
And we have to begin to be more sensitive to our inner life, to the various influences which are constantly working, our various projections that we’re constantly making, the various images which are constantly arising. All the fears, all the hopes, all the misconceptions, beliefs, ideals, models, assumptions, ideas that we’re completely out of touch with. You know within Western psychology they emphasize very much the aspect of our self which is totally repressed, the unconscious. The bulk of what influences, that which makes us who we in fact we are, remains unconscious to our awareness. So there’s no hope in a way of acting skillfully, of acting knowledgeably when we don’t even know ourselves.
We really can’t deal with our problems realistically. We don’t know who we are. I’d like to suggest that we do this mindfulness of breathing as we usually do. And then for a few minutes after that, we’ll practice what is called choiceless awareness. Now I have mentioned a technique in the practice of mindfulness of breathing.
You can use the techniques of counting. Counting one through five, one through six. I think most of you are familiar with that. Counting. But also the noting process to whatever the mind attends to, whatever it is distracted to.
First, the attending to the breath, noting that when you’re breathing in, noting in mentally not verbally. And then out, noting out. Then whatever your mind naturally becomes distracted to, whether it’s hearing, thinking, feeling, touching, smelling, whatever noting that. So you emphasize what your mind is involved in. You’re developing your awareness.
You know what your mind is attending to. And then we can go beyond that. We can practice choice less awareness where we’re not trying to control the mind at all. We’re going to allow the mind to attend. We’re going to allow the mind to become involved in any object that it naturally tends toward, that it naturally is attracted to.
This will be the most stimulating object within your environment. It could be a sound. It could be a feeling pain in your knee or something. It could be your own thought patterns. We’re just simply going to let the mind drift to whatever it’s naturally attracted to.
But one important factor, we’re going to maintain awareness. We’re going to note. If the mind goes to the sound of the heater, for example. Hearing, hearing. Don’t try to draw it in any other direction.
Just where it naturally attends to, but know what it’s involved in. Hearing. If there’s a sound, hearing. If there’s a pain, pain, pain. Without trying to in any way control or influence the mind.
Just observing, watching, being aware, accepting, becoming more sensitive without having to control. We’ll practice what is called choice less awareness for a few moments. So if you sit in a comfortable position, we’ll begin with mindfulness and breathing. And you can use either both of the two techniques of counting to help in the mindfulness and noting to develop the awareness. And then we’ll practice choice less awareness, allowing the mind to be naturally attracted to whatever object, but consistently, quietly, gently noting in your mind whatever that object may be.
Now just allow the mind to be drawn naturally to where our object naturally tends tore. But continue to be aware, note in your mind what that object is. If it’s hearing, thinking, feeling, just quietly noting what your mind is involved in, maintaining your awareness. And always like the refuge. It’s said that, you know, to study Buddhism is to study oneself, essentially, To begin to learn about ourselves.
And this is very much our refuge. The more that we can learn about ourselves, all the various facets of ourselves, all the various layers of ourselves. And we have to become a refuge for ourselves. It’s said that the a refuge, a proper or worthy refuge has four qualities: fearlessness, skill and means, compassion, and equanimity. So, you know, in becoming a refuge for ourselves, learning about ourselves, we have to begin to understand how very much afraid we all are, how very much fear governs our lives, how most of our seemingly rational decisions are in fact based upon the emotion of fear.
And the essence of cowardness is not to admit one’s fears even to one’s self. And one great Theravāda master, Ajahn Mun, said we should try to find out what we fear most and that’s what we should do. We need to develop this fearless quality to commit oneself to growth, to get in touch with and be willing to acknowledge the fears which govern our lives. And this becomes a way of refuge, a commitment to growth. And the more that we learn about ourselves, learning how our mind operates, learning how we relate with others is the only way that we can really become skillful.
Skillful in operating our own lives and skillful in being able to help others. So it also involves a process of learning about how our mind operates and how we relate with the world and developing compassion. You know we’re very vulnerable people. We have like a soft spot. We have to become gentle with ourselves.
You know when you see something vulnerable, there’s almost a natural response to be gentle. Like when you see a little baby, how vulnerable it is. There’s a natural response to be gentle with it. And we have to become gentle with ourselves. Realizing our own vulnerability that we all have this soft spot.
We have to have compassion for ourselves. Developing equanimity. Beginning to seek and allow all the various facets of our personality. The multiplicity of personality of the people we can be. The good parts of ourselves and additionally the bad parts of ourselves.
Be willing to accept all those various parts of ourselves with equanimity. It doesn’t mean that we aren’t going to change but for the moment accepting this is who in fact I am and being willing to be that. So becoming a refuge for ourselves, we’re becoming fearless, developing skill and means, developing compassion and equanimity for ourselves, within ourselves. We become a refuge for ourselves. We become a refuge for others.
You know the process of going to one’s own wisdom, one’s own love and compassion, and one’s own creative energy, one’s own aliveness, getting in touch with the basic ground of our being as a source of our refuge, the source of our way of being completely born, of waking up, solving 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 the other perfections, may I attain Buddha for the sake of all beings. To the Buddha, Dharma, and the Sangha, I go for refuge until I am enlightened. To the merit I create by practicing giving any 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 any other perfections, may I attain Buddhahood for the sake of all beings. So I think some of you remember what we’re talking about. We’re talking about the three principal aspects of the path. The path is something which takes you from where you’re at now to your destination, to your goal, whatever that might be.
It’s what you travel upon. And within the Buddhist context, at present we’re ordinary beings. We’re going to become extraordinary beings. We’re going to realize everything that we can become. We’re going to solve our problems and help others to solve their problems.
So there’s a way to get there, to that goal. It’s called a path. We have to develop that path within ourselves. And this path has three aspects, Three Principal Aspects. We have to develop the determination to be free.
We have to open our hearts to others. We have to see deeply into the nature of reality. These are the three principal aspects of the path. This is what we’ve been talking about. I mentioned about confronting our problems, all the various types of problems that we have, Being willing to be honest with oneself and acknowledge those problems, to work with them, not to indulge in them.
You know there are personal problems, personal suffering, and there are universal problems, universal sufferings. Personal problems evolve out of desiring to protect and foster a particular ego image, a particular idea of who you think you are In order to enhance, to foster that idea, that image that you’re holding on to, in order to protect it, we develop personal problems, the various attachments, the various aversions. Universal problems, universal sufferings. We can call them the existential problems. Existential sufferings.
On the other hand, for example, feelings of separateness, feelings of inauthenticity, feelings of seeking to find union with ourselves, with other people, with the world around us. These fears, dread, anxiety, are a constant current, a constant theme of our life. Evolve out of having any ego image at all. Holding on to any ego image, any idea of a separate identity. No amount of psychotherapy, no amount of group work can overcome these feelings of separateness, these feelings of alienation, these feelings of insufficiency, these feelings of seeking might become something more than who we are, to find some kind of union.
This is the area of spiritual growth. The spiritual method of ego transcendence. Within human awareness there’s the principle of closedness, ignoring quality, which we use the term ignorance. And it manifests itself as an ego forming tendency, grasping at an aspect, at an idea of who we are and reifying that, concretizing it, making it solid. This is who I am with such and such character, with such and such personality.
This is the tendency of ignorance. Then we seek to protect, foster that particular image of who we are. This is ego grasping. We go on. We develop ego centeredness, self centeredness where we seek to bring happiness or protect this self, this newly formed self at the expense and exclusion of others.
So in order to overcome these two instinctive tendencies which are the root of all our problems, we develop the two paths of seeing deeply into the nature of reality and opening our hearts to others. Seeing deeply into the nature of reality and opening our hearts to others. And as a prerequisite for the development of these two paths, it’s necessary to develop the determination, the getup. You know to empower our mind and to give it some direction. We commit ourselves to growth, to developing the path of seeing deeply into nature of reality, to commit ourselves to opening our heart to others as much as possible and leaving our heart open.
To go beyond our self centered obsessions. To go beyond the neophyte ignoring quality of ignorance. So these are the three principal aspects of the path: developing the determination to be free, opening your hearts to others, and seeing deeply into the nature of reality. These represent the means. These are the methods to bring about a complete spiritual and psychological transformation.
They represent the therapeutic process of eliminating these universal problems which everyone has. Everyone in this room has. They’re inherent to ordinary existence. They’re inherent to ego based existence. In many ways psychological growth or just growth in general spiritual growth involves challenging our reality as we know it.
Challenging reality is a prerequisite for change, common to all therapeutic processes. So each of these three principal aspects of the path challenges some particular misconception, some mistaken model, some wrong belief that we’re holding. They help us to begin to get in touch with our true nature, to begin to see how things in fact actually are. Overcoming our habitual tendency to want things to be as we would like them to be, as we think they should be. We need to get in touch with the way things actually are and being willing to accept them and work appropriately in a real world.
And that’s enough. We don’t need anything more than that. The idea of reality or truth has been a therapeutic process and this is the foundation of Buddhism. That truth is healing, that reality is healing. So you know the average person, while he thinks he’s awake, actually is half asleep or probably more than that.
His contact with reality is very partial. Most of what he believes to be reality, whether it’s the reality within his own self or outside of himself externally, what he believes to be his reality is simply a set of fictions which his mind is constructing. It is a fantasy world. Each of us lives in our individual world that images, fantasies, projections. We very rarely touch reality.
We very rarely know one another without projecting all our hang ups, all our idiosyncrasies, all our neurosis on that other person. You know last week there was a speaker at the Union Society and his name was Robert Johnson, an American. After he gave his talk, he was talking with someone and I was just listening. How very much we don’t see other people. How very much we see we only see our projections.
He was saying that someone asked him how would you know the difference Actually being able to say, I know this person, or I’m simply knowing my own projections which I’m my alienated projections which I’m putting on that person. And he said, Anytime there’s any affective quality to what you’re talking about in regards to that other person. That is to say, anytime there’s any emotional investment, it’s almost sure there’s some projection. If I say my next door neighbor is six foot tall, weighs one hundred and eighty kilos, has brown hair, then it’s probably I’m being very realistic. I know I can state that quite clearly.
There’s very little emotional involvement in that. But if I say he’s the greatest guy in the world, or I say, Oh, he’s not very intelligent, there’s some projection in my way of relating with him. There’s some emotional investment. I really don’t know him. I’m talking about what my idea of who he is, not in fact who he is.
And this is the way we work with almost everything in our lives, the people, the situations. We very rarely know what is outside of our own ideas. We’re strangers to ourselves. For me this person is becoming more and more apparent. Strangers to ourselves and to others, to other people.
And we don’t experience life but only our thoughts about life, our conceptions about the world. We only experience all our own alienated projections. The neurotic person insists that reality must conform to his idea. And when he recognizes that it doesn’t, then he reacts with either an impulse to force reality to correspond to his ideas, to his wishes, which of course is impossible. Or he reacts with feelings of powerlessness, emptiness because he cannot perform the impossible.
It’s very much like a child. A new child It’s difficult for a child to accept the way things are. It shouldn’t be like that. So the child either reacts, you know, becomes furious that his wishes are not being fulfilled even though they can’t be, or he reacts with defeat. Powerlessness.
But a developed person, a person who is aware of reality and its laws, acts appropriately to the way things are and experiences peace and fulfillment. There’s always some gap between at our deeply unconscious level there is a clinging to a world of unchanging beliefs, objects, and minds. Clinging to a world of unchanging beliefs, objects and minds. There’s always going to be a continuous gap between our beliefs and our belief conditioned perceptions, our belief conditioned perceptions on the one hand, and the ever changing nature of what actually is. Is what we believe our belief, conditioned perceptions, our belief informs our perceptions.
We’re creating a type of world. We live in our own individual worlds which we are constantly creating on the basis of our beliefs which determine what type of perception and what actually is in the real world as it’s actually happening. There’s a gap. There’s a discordance. There’s a conflict.
The nature of ego is conflict. And therefore there’s always a factor of disappointment, always a factor of frustration, always a factor of alienation, of separateness. This is suffering. An ego centered world is characterized by anxiety and confusion. And we always feel fragmented, for example, and alienated from our universe.
We don’t feel that this is our world. There’s a sense of me against the world. That the universe is not my world. There’s always an ongoing struggle and it’s like floating on water. You have to keep struggling or you’re going to sink.
This constant battle, this constant conflict, this constant struggle, this constant anxiety. So the Buddha made a discovery. His personal discovery was that beyond the process of ego there is a state of peace and unconditioned openness. Peace and unconditioned openness. So, cessation of this self deception of ego means the cessation of this fundamental anxiety, this fundamental conflict that pervades our lives, these universal problems, these universal sufferings.
This is the reason that we make use of the spiritual path. It’s not so much to solve our personal problems, but to begin to solve our problems at a very much deeper level. The problems of ego based existence or just ordinary altogether. The cessation of our belief in ego which in fact forms a barrier to fully and joyfully living our lives. You know this, to getting back to the living quality of our lives, the aliveness, something that we’ve lost, something that once in a while we experience.
We get a taste of liberation once in a while perhaps. There seems to be some intrinsic instinctive directing toward wakefulness in our Buddha nature. So seeing deeply into the nature of reality gives rise to the possibility of realizing our nature to its fullest. What What I mean by realize here is not simply intellectual. Not intellectual understanding but it means actually becoming the embodiment and actualizing the understanding, you know, being all that we can be.
Being all that we can be. This is very much a theme of Buddhism. It’s very much one of my themes in a way. That we are very wonderful people. That we have a great, innate wisdom.
We have a great, innate joy and compassion within our being. We have to find a way to recontact our source of aliveness, our source of being. We’re constantly involved in becoming and having as a way of life. We’ve lost the ability to be. So coming back in contact with our ability to be, to begin to get in touch with our innate wisdom, with our qualities of love, to get in touch with our case history of sanity that we’ve been expressing our entire lives.
You know, they constantly are talking about psychotherapy. I’m a little bit preoccupied with psychotherapy. About all this patient’s case history of mental illness. And how often do they talk about this patient’s case history of sanity, of compassion, of wisdom? It’s ignored.
It’s overlooked. You know, they’ve been talking about refuge. So in seeing deeply into the nature of reality, we can begin to contact the way things actually are, begin to act appropriately, begin to actualize. And this potential that we all have. So, working on this third principal aspect of the path, seeing deeper into the nature of reality.
And I’ve mentioned that we’re working at it on four levels with the graduated understanding, coming to an understanding. Ultimately we want to understand dependent arising. The Dalai Lama said that dependent arising is like the slogan of the Buddha. We actually had some badges printed up that said Dependent Arising, the slogan of the Buddha. That’s his campaign slogan.
But it’s quite difficult to actually embody that understanding of Dependent Arising, let alone make an actualizing your life dependent arising. It’s difficult even to come to an intellectual understanding. So this process of contacting reality is a graduated process like walking, stepping up the rungs of a ladder. We’re going to walk up, step up four rungs of a ladder. We want to understand dependent arising.
In order to understand dependent arising, we have to understand emptiness. Things are empty because they’re dependent arising. And they’re dependent arising because they’re empty of a fantasized way of existing. Because they’re empty of true existence, of inherent existence, of independent existence. In these two sides of the same coin.
This is the level that we want to ultimately reach. But on the way there, on traveling this path to see deeply in nature of reality, we’re going to pass through three prior levels. The Hearer’s level of understanding, the mind only level of understanding, the autonomy middle way school of understanding, Finally, the highest, the final thought of the Buddha on the nature of reality which is the Consequentialist Middle Way school, the dependent arising, emptiness, the non inherent existence of all phenomena. Right now we’re talking about the hearer stage. The hearer does not call into question external phenomena.
Whether he says they ultimately exist, this table ultimately exists, That heater ultimately exists. The Buddha house ultimately exists. They exist very much as they appear. They don’t call them into question. What the Hearer does call into question is the nature of the self, the I, the ego.
This is what he has doubts about. He sees the I, the self, the ego or that is to say the misconception concerning this as the root of his problem, as the source of cyclic existence, as the fundamental basis for all of his suffering. His personal self. We have to understand the nature of ego. So we all have an instinctive belief in a singular, unchanging, independent, existing self.
A singular, unchanging, independent self. We have this instinctive belief, model, idea. It may be unconscious. It probably is. Almost surely it is.
We have to bring it to conscious awareness. And this is the root of our problems from the hearer’s point of view. As we’ve talked about in the past, it was emphasized in the past, you may argue, You know, I don’t believe that. I don’t think that. I don’t think that I am a singular, unchanging, independent person, I.
I don’t think that. He misses the point. The question is not whether or not the self is an unchanging composite stream of events conditioned by many complex factors. There is a self. It is a continual flux, a changing aggregation of many complex factors.
Any rational analysis will show us that, that this is in fact the case. And we’re going to perform this analysis to in fact show us that this is in fact the case. We have to convince ourselves that in fact this is the case. The question is, that being the case, that we are this stream, this flux, this aggregation of constantly changing factors, then why is it that we behave emotionally as if we were a lasting, single, independent self or I? We may be able to rationally come to an understanding, convince ourselves that I am a stream, composite aggregation of constantly changing complex factors.
But that’s not the way we emotionally react to situations. When we’re looking for the self, it’s very important to remember that it is an emotional response. An emotional response. A response conditioned by belief that one is examining. We’re looking at an emotional response which is conditioned by belief, by our mistaken conceptions.
When one responds to events as if one had a self, For example, when you feel very hurt or offended, one should ask oneself, Who is it that’s so hurt? Who is it that feels so offended? You will not find that you’re believing at that moment that you are a composite of constantly changing complex mental and physical events. But you will find that you are grasping at a type of self which is lasting, unchanging, independently existing. That’s your emotional response based upon these beliefs which are at present unconscious beliefs.
This is what we have to begin to look at. This is going to be emphasized in our talk when we actually begin to make the analysis. So we have to begin to differentiate between what we might rationally consider and what we actually emotionally relate with. There’s a difference, a definite difference. Whether you are aware of it or not, you respond emotionally to situations on the basis of a belief in a singular, unchanging, independent self.
That’s the way you in fact are relating to situations and emotions whether you believe in such a type of self rationally or not. When you address yourself to what or who this self is, this emotionally respondent self, you can’t find it. It’s a fiction created out of confusion. It’s the object of a misconception. It’s like, you know, we’re going to This is an example that’s used quite often in Buddhism.
That’s quite a useful example. It is like conceiving of a striped rope as a snake. You know you are walking along in the evening and there is a striped rope along the sidewalk. You look over and you see a stripe, you see a snake and you react with fear. There’s nothing about that object at all which has a snake like quality.
There’s no snake there at all. Completely mistaken. But you believe it to be a snake and you react upon that. Your emotional reaction is fear. Just the way you experience that object.
That snake exists for a mistaken conception. For that mistaken mind, that snake exists. Only for that mistaken mind. For a correct mind, the mind which sees things as they actually are, that snake doesn’t exist at all. But for that mistaken conception, that mistaken consciousness, that snake exists and therefore fear arises.
Know due to this combination, it’s dark, There’s a striped rope. That’s external conditions. Internal conditions. There’s a lack of awareness, a discriminating awareness. So, in a combination of these internal conditions and external conditions a mistaken conception arises and fear arises.
It’s holding onto something as real which in fact doesn’t exist at all. The Buddha, he often used the example of a dream to illustrate his teachings in the nature of reality. And we’re going to be using this dream analogy example throughout these four levels of coming to an understanding of the nature of reality. This dream analogy can be applied with increasing subtlety as we go up and not as we rise up in our understanding. And also, it’s a good example for showing how the two truths, the ultimate truth and the relative truth are mutually dependent.
And we’re going to be discussing the two truths eventually later on. How they work together, the two truths. So I think if you use this, really think about it.