Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. “What separates renunciation from compassion?” is the organizing question of this 44-minute commentary by Ven Jampa Gendun on the second principal aspect of Tsongkhapa’s Three Principal Aspects of the Path. He unpacks a verse on the four powerful currents — desire, ignorance, karma, and wrong views — showing through vivid examples how little conscious control we have over our reactive patterns. He then makes a central argument: renunciation and compassion are the same impulse aimed at different objects, and genuine concern for others can only grow from having honestly faced your own suffering. He outlines two classic methods for cultivating the awakening heart — the sevenfold cause-and-effect approach and exchanging self for others, including the giving-and-taking visualization — and closes with a step-by-step loving-kindness meditation moving through self, friend, stranger, and enemy.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 16 3 PA 1998 06 03.mp3
UUID: 63aa14d7-c5c6-4112-8d99-6ef602193209
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: Three Principal Aspects of the Path 1988-1990 (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 1998-06-03
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 44.1 minutes
Words: ~4,670
We’re looking at the three principal aspects of the path by Tsongkhapa. I’m going to pass out some copies of it. The three principal aspects of the path: developing the determination to be free, awakening to others and seeing deeply into the nature of reality. We’ve completed the first principal aspect of the path. Verse which begins at the bottom begins the second principal aspect of the path, the actual explanation.
I explained this for our last talk. All ordinary beings are carried by the continuum of the four powerful currents. So this powerful what is meant by four powerful currents could either be interpreted as birth, old age, disease and death sensuous desire, desire for conditioned existence, I. E. By that I mean desire for any existence within the boundaries of ego.
Ignorance, that’s two. Ignorance with respect to cause and effect and selflessness, karma and the ultimate nature of reality. And the fourth is wrong views. All these four are the causes of the former four, that is sensuous desire, desire of a conditioned existence, ignorance, and wrong views. These four are the causes of birth, old age, disease, and death.
So these four powerful currents can be taken to mean either one of those sets of four. Are tied with the tight bounds of actions difficult to oppose. These are the bonds of our karma, habitual tendencies of mind. I just mentioned this. karma has many effects.
Among the various types of effects is the effect which is similar to the cause. That is, we simply like or have a tendency or are habituated to repeat the same actions again and again and again. And these bind us. You know, how difficult it is to quit smoking, and that’s a very simple mundane example. Or how difficult it is for us to forego self-cherishing, which is infinitely more difficult.
We’re bound in these. We’re tied by these tendencies of mind, our karma. Have entered into the iron cage of apprehending self. We’re in a cage of afflictive emotions, desire, hatred, desirous, spite, jealousy, miserliness. These are like the bars of a cage, and we’re, trapped in this iron cage due to the apprehending the concrete, inherently existing self, unchanging the existing self, acts as the foundation for all the various other afflicted emotions.
When we come to the third principal aspect of the path, seeing deeply into the nature of reality, we’ll go into that in some detail without understanding that there’s no way to go beyond the bonds of ego. There’s no way to get out of our cage. We can only make it comfortable at best. Are completely beclouded with the thick darkness of ignorance. So we’re led into all these afflicted emotions by ignorance.
Ignorance has two properties. One, it causes to mistake the nature of reality and also simply obstructs us from seeing the way things actually are. So it acts like a thick cloud from being able to apprehend the actual way things are, to apprehend the ultimate nature of our self, for example. So it not only obstructs, but it also causes us to make mistakes. It’s not simply You know, the term in the Buddhist sense Literally it means unknowing, misknowing perhaps, ignorance.
It does not simply mean that we don’t know something. You know, I don’t know what’s in the next room, for example. It means something more than that. It means an obstruction to seeing the way things are and actually misinterpreting, misunderstanding the way things are. The next verse, Are born into cyclic existence limitlessly in it.
This is the final result from the thick darkness of ignorance, is that the mind we are powerlessly forced to take rebirth. We have no choice in this matter. We’re powerlessly forced to experience old age disease and death even though we don’t want to. cyclic existence, compulsive reoccurring patterns that we I talked about this when we went through the discussion of karma, how simply upon meeting a particular condition, a particular pattern which is in a potential form in our mind is activated, ripened, and we act out that pattern. You know, someone pushes our button and we automatically react.
We do this choicelessly. We do not choose to do this. It’s as if we have no control. We went through some examples. For example, the very fact that you of having to undergo example, the mental suffering of a mother, of a father, the pleasure, the mental pleasure of a mother or father is due to a compulsive pattern in your mind.
By conceiving of yourself as a mother, you’re going to experience the happiness and the suffering of a mother. If you did not conceive of yourself in that way, then you would not experience these particular types of suffering likewise a female or a male. I explain this in the sense that the interplay of reactive patterns, which constitute these tendencies of karma. A woman is walking down the street looking in the store windows, enjoying the sight window shopping, and she sees a man walking across the street. Now, if a condition is present, a situation occurs, automatic and various reoccurring reactive patterns are going to become activated.
She’s going to begin to conceive of that object walking across the street as a man. She then conceives of herself as a woman. She then conceives of the memory and various images come into play and she becomes afraid, for example, as she crosses over to the other side of the street. This whole pattern, she had no choice. The fear which arose is suffering.
She had no choice in this matter. It’s not that she chose to conceive of herself as a woman, she didn’t. It’s not that she chose to conceive of this object walking across the street as a man, she didn’t. These are all karmic consequences, tendencies of the mind to label particular objects in a particular way. There was no choice involved in this whole process whatsoever.
It’s a We’re powerless in this process without awareness. And they’re tortured ceaselessly by the three sufferings. We’ve talked about the three sufferings. We talked about them, as I’ve stated, only without a foundation have the determination to be free. There’s no way we can generate the latter two paths.
Without seeing our own suffering and developing the determination to be free beyond our own dissatisfactory patterns? Are we going to develop the determination or compassion to help others to go beyond their dissatisfactory patterns? Without this determination to be free for ourselves, there’s no way we can really develop real compassion. We can’t really want somebody else to be free, to want them to go beyond suffering unless we have wanted that for ourselves. Because compassion is simply a redirecting of our attention away from ourselves toward others.
Without having an intimate understanding of our own situation, there’s no way we can intimately understand what’s going on in someone else’s mind. So we have to see our own situation very clearly and understand the dissatisfactory quality of any state which is bounded by ego, of our present direction in life, of our present patterns of life, and want to go beyond them, to grow, to emerge out of them. We simply redirect our attention to others and understand that others in the same situation that we’re in exactly equal. They want to be happy just like myself. They don’t want to suffer just like myself.
And this causes compassion to arise. So in a way there’s no difference between the determination to be free, renunciation, whatever you want to call it, and compassion. It’s simply a change of object. Rather than pointing your attention towards yourself and your own suffering, you point it toward others and others’ suffering and renunciation becomes compassion. So in developing this determination, renunciation, we investigated the three types of sufferings, three types of dissatisfactory quality of ego states.
The suffering of pain, mental and physical pain, the suffering of change, there’s nothing that we can hold onto, the things are constantly changing, And the suffering of compositional pervasive compositional suffering, dissatisfactory quality of having to carry around the burden of ego wherever we go, whatever we do. It’s always there watching us, on our back. It’s a very subtle kind of dissatisfactory quality, but it’s still there. So these are the three types of sufferings which we ourselves have to investigate and wish to go beyond. By extending this, our understanding to others, then we can develop compassion for them.
Having viewed others in the same way that we viewed ourselves, thinking thus of the conditions of mothers who have come to such a state. When he uses the word mothers, means that quite literally. You know, we’re going to talk about this maybe next week. It gets to the whole point of rebirth, that our minds have no beginning and no end, the continuum of our mind. We have taken an infinite number of rebirths at an infinite number of places and in the vast majority of those rebirths we’ve been born from a mother.
So therefore logically we cannot point to any person and say this person has not been our mother. That everyone in this room has in a past life been your mother and has raised you in kindness again and again, just like the mother of your this life. So it literally means thinking of the condition of my mothers. We have to This is difficult to develop this conviction. It’s difficult to develop the conviction in rebirth.
But we can go over some of the reasons, the reasoning next week. That’s quite necessary. Thinking thus of the condition of mothers who have come to such a state generates the supreme altruistic intention to become enlightened. So we have to ask ourselves, know, we we can you know, can I even help myself? You know, I don’t want to suffer.
I don’t want to completely be experienced to continue experiencing these dissatisfactory states, reoccurring patterns of my mind. Can I actually alleviate my own difficulties, my own dissatisfaction? Let alone can I even begin to think about helping others in really meaningful, effective way? So in order to go beyond these dissatisfactory qualities of conditioned existence, existence conditioned by ego. We have to develop the knowledge, the understanding of the various means, the various paths, the various techniques.
Not only that, we have to actually experience, put them into use, and experience their results. It’s only then that we can ourselves understand the methods for going beyond dissatisfaction, and it’s only then that we can be of real effective benefit to others. It becomes necessary for us personally to experience the results of the methods to bring happiness. We have to understand what types of actions serve to support and maintain dissatisfactory patterns of the ego. What types of action perpetuate suffering, dissatisfaction?
And which types of actions lead beyond to more positive states? Otherwise I think we’re very much the blind leading the blind, isn’t it? It’s not that we can’t help others, it’s not that we shouldn’t. We should do what we can. But we have to see that ultimately most of what we’re doing is alleviating temporary difficulties.
The basic patterns haven’t been changed. You can hold someone’s hand but you can’t always be there to hold their hand. Sometimes holding the hand just isn’t enough. You have to develop the skills and the means to be able to help others more effectively than merely holding their hand. It’s not to say holding their hand isn’t a worthwhile and meaningful thing to do, But there are other more meaningful and other more worthwhile means we can employ to benefit others to help them go beyond their difficulties.
To get more at the root of their difficulties rather than a particular manifestation which they’re experiencing at that moment. But there’s a problem, difficulty in this. If you want to solve the world’s problems, you have to put your own household in order, your own individual life. This is somewhat of a paradox. People have a genuine desire to go beyond their own 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 how to rule your own household, your 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 further chaos. How can we really help others?
Know, talking about this current, this stream of the four powerful currents, how can we save others from the swirling stream of their own mind? How can we rescue them? So in order to be of real benefit to others, of significant effective benefit to others, then we have to develop skills ourselves. We have to become extremely sane people, healthy people ourselves. Merely wishing to help others is not enough.
There’s a a saying by the Buddha where he says, the lords of subdueers, lords of subdueers is an epithet for the Buddhas. The lords of subdueers do not wash away sins with water nor do they remove suffering with their hands nor do they transfer their realizations to the minds of others, but by their showing of the truth all will be made free. So in the end it’s the truth and understanding the truth, which is going to help us to go beyond our dissatisfactions and frustrations and our suffering. And by understanding the truth ourselves, by being free ourselves, then we are in the perfect position to help others understand the truth, to help others to be free. So this we have to develop this inspiration and this aspiration to make ourselves happy, healthy, sane, loving human beings in order to help others to do the same.
You know, it’s like we have to get our own act together in order to help others do the same. You know, we all have to become students of truth. We all have to become the truth in a way, and thereby we become a refuge for others. We’ve been talking about refuge quite a lot, and every week I talk about refuge. Ultimately we all have to become a refuge for others.
We take refuge in ourselves and we become a refuge for others so that they can become a refuge for themselves. We all have to become a refuge, a guide, an exemplar, a teacher. You know, we call this a Buddha. A Buddha is just someone who’s experiencing unremitting peace within themselves and motivated by compassion works in the world to benefit others to help them find the same peace that he or she themselves are experiencing. You know if So our motivation begins to change somewhat, begins to take in more universal character, why we’re we’re doing what we’re doing, the activities, our actions, purpose for practicing and purpose for meditating.
You know if there’s no nobler thought that the human mind has ever thought, has ever considered, than to seek to achieve perfection for the sake of all sentient beings. You know, no matter what we do in our lives at the time of our death, if we can look back at our lives and see our lives were completely meaningless, wasted, that we achieved nothing. If only we can look back and for one minute we can remember that there was a moment when we actually aspired to perfect ourselves to to become healthy happy sane loving human beings for the benefit of others. If we can generate that thought for one moment and we can die remembering that if nothing else in our entire lives we had that one moment experience then we can die quite happily, quite satisfied that our mind was not wasted, that our life was not, meaningless, useless. Just that thought alone.
He’s talking about the awakening mind. You know, this this opening to others, bodhicitta, awakening heart. It is the supreme ambrosia that overcomes the sovereignty of death. It is the inexhaustible treasure that eliminates all poverty in the world. It is the supreme medicine that quells the world’s disease.
It is the tree that shelters all beings, wandering and tired on the path of conditioned existence. It is the universal bridge that leads to freedom from unhappy states of birth. It is the dawning moon of the mind that dispels the torment of the afflicted emotions. It is the great sun that finally removes the misty ignorance of the world. It is the quintessential butter from the churning of the milk of Dharma.
For all those guests traveling on the path of conditioned existence who wish to experience the bounties of happiness, this will satisfy them with joy and actually place them in supreme bliss. It’s said that by generating the awakening mind, this opening our hearts to others, awakening heart, this single quality and all the other qualities will naturally follow. It will come automatically, we don’t have to worry about them. And then we don’t have to we can begin to not have to be so concerned about ourselves. We don’t have to worry that we’re going we’re not going to get the happiness that we desire.
Simply by achieving this developing this one thought that all the happiness we could ever hope for will naturally flow towards us. All the various realizations, all the various understandings necessary to achieve you know to achieve wisdom, develop a higher states of consciousness. They will naturally come, we don’t even have to consider, we don’t even have to work toward them, they will just flow toward us. This is the power of this one thought, this altruistic intention to achieve highest enlightenment for the sake of all sentient beings. In the next few talks I’m going to discuss the methods for actually cultivating, developing this awakening heart.
The actual methods, the meditational techniques. There are two lineages, two basic methods, techniques. One technique is called the sevenfold cause and effect method. It has a lineage from Śākyamūni Buddha down through Maitreya, and Asaṇga, and then to Atisha. It involves five causes and two effects.
First, we’re going to recognize all sentient beings as our mothers. That’s why we’re going to have to discuss rebirth. Then we’re going to remember their kindness, develop a wish to repay their kindness, develop love, compassion, those are five causes. This is going to produce two effects that is exceptional resolve, determining to become healthy, to become skillful, to develop all your qualities to their fullest extent so you can benefit others. Developing this determination, this resolve.
And this leads to the seventh, which is the effect of the awakening heart, this intention to achieve enlightenment for the sake of all sentient beings. This is based on equanimity as a foundation, developing an unbiased feeling, a feeling of concern equally for all sentient beings. This is like the foundation, the platform, whereby you actually develop these five causes and having as a result these two effects. The second method has as a lineage, comes from Śākyamūni Buddha again, down through Mañjuśrī to Śāntideva, and again to Atisha. It’s called exchanging self for others.
Exchanging self for others. What is exchanged is that we don’t change places with other people. We exchange self-cherishing for the cherishing of others. So it begins with equalizing oneself with others. You know that all sentient beings, wants happiness just like myself, then those sentient beings just like myself once we suffered.
And then we begin to contemplate the negative consequences of self-cherishing, the positive consequences of cherishing others. And we actually begin to identify with others. We do role playing in a very skillful way. We empathize with others to the extent that we actually identify ourselves as them. This is the actual exchange of self for others, a psychological technique where we begin to shift the psychological center from ourselves to others, identifying with others.
Then we practice a visual technique which is called giving and taking where we actually, not actually, in our imagination, we imagine taking on the sufferings of others and giving away our happiness to others in return. You know, it’s a becomes a real blow to the ego empire. This our ego doesn’t like it in the least. So we’re you know, this whole process we’re trying to develop a sense of relatedness with others. An affectionate concern for others, for all sentient beings, to the extent that we simply cannot remain indifferent to the situation of others, to the state of others.
You know, it begins to penetrate. You know, in India, it becomes quite apparent how you must develop, you generally do develop a callous state of mind. You see so much poverty, physical stark naked suffering in front of you constantly that you almost as a protection, as a defense mechanism, have to become indifferent. And our ego develops this tough hide, this leather surface, and it doesn’t allow things to penetrate. We’re purposely beginning to soften up this leather.
You might might question, well what, you know, what the hell is the benefit of doing something like that? It’s only gonna cause me difficulty suffering. You know, sounds like it’s a it’s the opposite of what you should be doing, what might be desirable, and why cause myself more problems than I already have. It would be a great mistake to think that following a spiritual path is simply the skillful avoidance of pain and problems. What we’re doing now is trading in our egos for wisdom and compassion.
You know, it’s similar to trading in a pile of shit for the most beautiful things that you could ever imagine in the world. That sounds like a rather absurd analogy, but you can become rather attached to a pile of shit, you know, feeling and its smell and its texture. It becomes very familiar, know, you identify with it. It becomes rather comforting after a while. So to an extent that’s the situation that we’re in, we sort of become familiar with the ego to the extent that we find it very comfortable even though there may be other more exalted states.
Know, we rather turn our blind eye to it and remain with our pile of shit, with that particular pile of shit that we’re quite attached to. Nāgārjuna, who is one of the greatest of all Buddhist masters, like a second Buddha, He says, If the rest of humanity and I wish to attain unsurpassable awakening, the basis for this is bodhicitta, bodhicitta being the awakening heart, as stable as the king of mountains, compassion which touches everything, and pristine wisdom which does not rely on duality. He’s specifically mentioning compassion. If we want unsurpassable awakening, if we want to be happy, healthy, loving, free human beings, we have no choice than to develop compassion, than to develop and open ourselves to others. For an intelligent person when their mind is seen clearly there’s no choice.
It is said, for the thinking person there’s nothing else to be done, there’s nothing else to do in life than to practice a spiritual path. It’s only when we’re confused that we see choices in front of ourselves. They only appear choices. When there’s clarity, when there’s wisdom, it is only action because you know your way. So we have to make some effort in some small way, you know, some intelligent effort.
If it is your inmost desire to go beyond your ego centered life, then you have to make some effort. If we accept some pain voluntarily, then someday our pain is going to end. If we refuse, whether want it or not, we’re going to continue to suffer. Our pain is never going to end. This is the tragedy of self-cherishing.
There’s book called by Dostoevsky, Brothers Karamazov. There’s a father, a Greek Orthodox father, father’s name was Zosima. Father Zosima is dying and his brothers, his students are gathered around his deathbed. Brothers and teachers, I ponder what is hell. I maintain that it is the suffering of being unable to love.
It’s difficult to constantly be loving and compassionate, but it’s even more difficult not to be. We’ll penetrate on loving kindness. So think of your own difficulties, your own problems and the fact that you want to be happy. Whatever you may have done in the past, whatever mistakes you may have created, you can simply regret them and determine not to repeat them again in the future. You can begin again.
However you may conceive of yourself, whatever identity you may hold, you can change. You can become anything that you want to be. But just for the moment, we have to accept ourselves, make friends with ourselves, all the various parts of ourselves, the good parts and the bad parts, and have compassion for ourselves, and wish ourselves well. Just direct positive feelings towards yourself. May I be happy.
May I grow. May I not suffer. May I be well. Put good feelings towards yourself. Think of someone that you like, that you love, someone of the same sex.
Imagine that person in front of you now. And remember all the good times that you’ve shared together, the kindness that this person has shown you, the happiness. Begin to direct the feelings of concern wishing happiness that naturally begin to arise. Radiate out positive feelings to this person, Wanting them to be happy. May all your wishes come true.
May you never suffer. Think of someone you neither like nor dislike, a stranger. You feel indifferent toward. Imagine that person in front of you. I want to try to go beneath the superficial appearances that we usually judge people by, that we usually cling to, whether they’re male or female, beautiful or ugly, young or old, whether they’re educated, their economic status, personality.
Try to go down to the depth of that person, to the essence of that person. Try to see the essence of that person that there’s someone there who wants to be happy and doesn’t want to suffer just like yourself. Exactly the same. Just as you wish your own self happiness, wish this person happiness because it’s very much a reflection about how we feel about ourselves deep down, how we relate to this essential person who’s just like us. I wish them happiness, just radiate out positive feelings to this person.
Now think of someone who disturbs your mind, who you have problems with, an enemy. Imagine that person in front of you. This person wants happiness and doesn’t want to suffer just like yourself. And perhaps their method of finding 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 are looking for. This person has done the same to you. And just as you have to forgive yourself for the mistakes that you’ve made, you have to begin to forgive this person for the mistakes that they’ve made. So just for the moment, set aside your grudge, your hurt, your anger, and see someone just like yourself wanting to be happy, being very confused about how to go about it, and making many mistakes along the way and wish them happiness. Now imagine all four of these people together, yourself and these three others, and try to see them as essentially equal in the point of view that they all want happiness, that they don’t want to suffer, there’s no difference.
All essentially exactly the same.