Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Ven Jampa Gendun opens this 24-minute session by drawing a sharp distinction between pity — which carries smugness and undermines the recipient’s sense of self-worth — and genuine compassion, which requires dissolving the subject-object divide between helper and helped. He then walks through three progressive types of compassion: observing sentient beings directly; observing them qualified by impermanence, like ripples on a pond; and observing them qualified by lack of inherent existence, illustrated by the image of a moon’s reflection on still water. A well-known Buddha verse — “Suffering alone exists, none who suffer” — anchors the third type, and an Einstein quotation on widening our circle of compassion closes the session. Suited to practitioners ready to explore the philosophical foundations underlying compassion practice.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 12 3 PA 1988 08 12.mp3
UUID: f6bda0d9-6893-457f-8982-3d9bfe1729a6
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: Three Principal Aspects of the Path 1988-1990 (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 1988-08-12
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 24.1 minutes
Words: ~2,510
With pity, there’s a feeling of superiority and a feeling of self righteousness. You’re more or less saying, know, I feel better than you. I feel warm and I feel good about myself. I feel good about myself and what I can do and able to help you. You know, with such a superior type of attitude, a smugness and arrogance, You know, at best with such an attitude, we can only offer even the the superficial help that we may be able to render to another person, to provide another person.
Even in that situation, you know, we’re encouraging the recipient of our help, you know, to feel worthless, to, you know, perhaps feel more worthless than they already feel at that moment. You know, to you to force him in a position where he sees us as good and themselves as bad. It’s difficult for someone who is in need to struggle against the pressing attention of someone who’s trying to undermine them, you know, by doing them good. You know, we don’t need anyone to feel sorry for us. This only undermines our own feelings of self worth.
And therefore, from feelings of pity, the help that we do render can cause more damage than help. So this is by taking the other person as an object to whom you’re going to do good to. So this begins to give us some insight into these three types of compassion. You know, this compassion for sentient beings, compassion for phenomena, and compassion of the unapprehendable. So somehow, if we’re going to create a pure type of compassion, divorced from afflictive emotions, from arrogance, where it’s going to be of actual benefit to ourselves and to others, we have to cease objectifying, creating an object to do good to.
We have to some way get around this. There’s this danger involved. In some way, you know, dissolve the boundaries which set us apart. You know, dissolve the boundaries of subject and object. We can do this both conventionally and ultimately.
Both conventionally and ultimately. So conventionally, the way we can cease to make people an object to whom we do good, objectifying is what I mean. Conventionally, we can be empathetic. That’s what we’ve been talking about up to now. We can’t know exactly what another person is experiencing, but we can get in touch with some of our own analogous experiences and appreciate what they might be going through, what they might be feeling.
And we can become we can be mindful of the dissatisfactory quality of our own life, the chaos within our own life, the unmanageability of our own life, the fear in our own life. So, you know, this feeling of always creating inequality, you know, this mindfulness that of sharing in a common problem dilemma of this thing called egoistic, you know, bounded existence. So for a moment, you know, coming in contact, creating a opening up a possible level of communication, you know, we can begin to perhaps dissolve, you know, this, the skin of our the thick skin of our encapsulated egos just for a moment. And perhaps some real communication can take place, some real sharing, and therefore some real helping, some real benefit where both you yourself and the other person has benefited. Mother Teresa, is an expert on the poor, has said that the poor more than your money want your respect to be respected as human beings.
So in this sense, and it’s emphasized again and again, it’s not so much, for example, this case, of what we give, but how we give it. How are we viewing that other person? Are we simply is it simply a matter of arrogance, or is it simply a sharing of understanding, meeting between two people? You know, are we in some way taking the other person as our self? So the qualities of equanimity, equality of self and others, you know, empathy, identification with another is the foundation of real compassion, you know, as sharing and responding to a common humanity.
So that’s one way conventionally we can ensure, guard against the danger of objectifying, you know, simply doing good to some object. Now ultimately, you know, we cease to objectify through the gradual integration of wisdom and compassion. You know, in a Buddha, one mind is a complete integration of great compassion and the wisdom, you know, understanding the nature of reality. Completely integrated, completely unified. So, you know, we can begin to work toward this because this is the the model, of our spiritual journey, the goal of our practice.
So everything should be directed towards this model, to emulating this model. So where the first type of compassion the compassion observing sentient beings. Observe nothing but sentient beings with having an aspect of wishing them to be free from suffering. The second of these two types of compassion in the case of the compassion observing impermanence qualifies the sentient being the compassion observing phenomena, qualifies the sentient being as with impermanence, and the compassion observing the unapprehendable qualifies the sentient being with selflessness or non inherent existence. We can talk about this a little.
So, when the mind of great compassion is explicitly and directly affected by a previous realization of the impermanence of sentient beings. Now when we realize impermanence, subtle impermanence, we implicitly realize the lack of independent existence, the lack of permanence, and the lack of singularity or unity of the individual. That in fact, that the person, the sentient being, is dependently existent, they’re constantly changing, they’re impermanent, and they’re multi they have a they’re non unitary. They have many parts, simply put. If we’ve understood this previously with regard to that sentient being, when we develop the mind of compassion, and this mind of the compassion is being affected by our previous understanding of the impermanence of this sentient being, then there’s no ability to fixate, to solidify that person.
The person is seen if qualified with his impermanence, as if it were like ripples on a still pond being gently blown by a light breeze. That it doesn’t give us the that that person and his problems aren’t fixed. They’re constantly changing, and they’re constantly in a dependent arising, that they’re not inherent in that person, that they’re arising out of the conditions of that person’s entire environment, including yourself. You’re part of that person’s environment. You’re not apart from that situation.
You’re not apart from that person’s problem. So there’s, you know, we create some dynamic quality in the way we relate with the person rather than fixing upon them. And then with respect to the third type, the compassion, observing the unapprehendable. So, when again, a mind of great compassion, when it observes a sentient being who has been previously understood, dependent upon who, we have realized the lack of inherent existence. By inherent existence, hopefully we’ll discuss this when we come to the third aspect of the path, seeing deeply into the nature of reality.
But it’s simply the fact that the being or nothing, but particularly in this case, the sentient being does not exist objectively from their own side in and of themselves, though we tend to think that they do. We conceive of them that way. It’s like the sentient being appears to that compassionate mind like a reflection of a moon on a still pond. No one even though there is the appearance of a moon, no one would mistake probably not, I don’t know no one would try to grab and say, Oh, I’ve got the moon. They realize that even though it appears as a moon, appears very realistic, still they understand it is merely a reflection, it’s not a real moon.
It’s not existing objectively from its own side. And this is the way we begin this type of compassionate mind begins to apprehend sentient beings. Qualified, you know, when it says unapprehendable, here the word apprehendable, apprehended as truly existent, Or unapprehendable? Unapprehended as truly existent. This compassionate mind is completely integrated with the understanding that this individual, that this sentient being, this person does not truly exist.
Okay, what does that mean? Is that going to cause us to cease objectifying? With such a type of understanding, there’s no way we can begin to objectify that person as merely to view that person as merely an object of our help, and that there’s someone to be helped. Ultimately, we understand at that very moment that there’s no one suffering, and there’s no one who is trying to help to eliminate their suffering. Ultimately, there’s no truly existent sufferer and there’s no truly existent helper trying to eliminate suffering and there’s no truly existent suffering.
There’s just suffering which is to be eliminated. You know, this is qualified, there’s no question about my suffering or your suffering. It’s the suffering which is to be eliminated. And there’s a very famous quotation from the Buddha, Suffering alone exists, none who suffer. The deed there is, but no doer thereof.
Nirvāṇa is, but no one seeking it. The path there is, but no one who travels it. So this is difficult to understand perhaps. We’re going to go into it when we discuss this, seeing deeply into the nature of reality. With such a type of compassionate mind which is viewing that sentient being with compassion, with the thought that I will free this sentient being from their suffering, but still there’s no possibility to objectify them because they understand that ultimately there’s no one suffering and there’s no one who’s going to be who is trying to free them from suffering.
But still there’s suffering and suffering is to be eliminated because no one wants to suffer. That’s our experience. So there’s no possibility in simply developing arrogance or using pity as a basis for relating to this person. It is said that the Buddha is compared to a wish-granting tree because his wisdom and his compassion are completely unified, there occurs spontaneous actions for the benefit of others. You know, These actions are simply a direct response to the needs of others.
It’s like a tree which bears fruit. There’s no conception of a giver of the fruit or a giver, a giving and a recipient. There’s simply this fruit which arises continually without the conception of a giver, a giving or a recipient of the fruit. So this is environmental generosity, Just responding skillfully to the needs of others. It’s as if there’s a vacuum and the skillful means moves in to fill up that vacuum with whatever is necessary, whatever to alleviate suffering without thought of an object to which one is doing good, to which one is helping, or even a subject, someone who is helping.
So this is this compassion observing the unapprehendable. Unapprehendable meaning the lack of self existence of the person who is being helped, the object of our compassion. Compassion has nothing to do with achievement at all. It is spacious and very generous. When a person develops real compassion, he is uncertain whether he is being generous to others or to himself because compassion is environmental generosity without direction, without “for me” and without “for them”.
It is filled with joy, spontaneously existing joy, constant joy in the sense of trust, in the sense that joy contains tremendous wealth and richness. So, you know, if we talk about compassion in its simplest form, simplest form, it’s simply seeing other people’s problems and wanting them to be released from those problems, those difficulties. You know, normally our our compassion is limited to only those we like, only those who in some way help us, enhance our life in some way. But also there are times when times of when there’s extreme suffering, someone has an accident, someone, you know, someone they love died. So that, you know, some broken relationship of some sort, even at these times, their compassion can arise.
Someone with someone even if we don’t know them, when they’re undergoing extreme suffering. But when people are, laughing and singing and having a good time, we don’t feel any compassion. Maybe we feel even jealous. But this is not the case with true compassion. Real compassion, true compassion does not distinguish between people.
It doesn’t distinguish between rich or poor, beautiful or ugly, or it doesn’t distinguish the situation itself. It extends to all sentient beings at all times. It’s it’s, you know, it’s directionless, universal. But when we, you know, I when we usually look at other at others superficially, we have a feeling that, for example, rich people don’t they don’t particularly suffer or, you know, famous people, movie star, rock and roll stars, or powerful people. That these somehow they they don’t suffer, and therefore it’s difficult for us to develop compassion for them.
To make them the it’s difficult for us to make them the object of our compassion. So, you know, this is this is fantasy. This is simply dreaming. This has nothing to do with reality. As long as a person is bounded by ego, there is suffering.
As long as a person is controlled by attachment, there is suffering. As long as a person is controlled by anger, there is suffering. As long as a person is controlled by confusion, there is suffering. No matter how rich, how famous, how powerful, there is suffering. No matter how beautiful, there is suffering.
No matter whether they might be laughing on the outside, there’s still suffering dissatisfaction. So this is a quote by Albert Einstein on compassion. A human being is part of a whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separate from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us.
Our task must be to free ourselves from the prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty. So opening our hearts to others, developing real compassion, developing great compassion entails not only in the development of love and compassion, but thinking that I can do something, a feeling of richness, of worth, and taking the responsibility to help. So this is really opening to others, taking the responsibility to help. So opening to others actually goes beyond love and goes beyond compassion. We dedicate ourselves to lead them out of suffering and to help them be happy.
So all sentient beings. So it’s universal in scope. All suffering, all sentient beings. That’s the way we can begin to open our heart. So we’ll stop there.
Would you like to stand for a moment, a minute?