Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Ven Jampa Gendun anchors this 44-minute session in a story of two Christian desert hermits who meet while each secretly doubts his vocation — one conceals his own crisis to hold firm for the other, and both find their way. The anecdote carries the central claim: caring for others draws on inner reserves the ego alone can never reach. He cites Śāntideva: since all virtue depends on sentient beings, they are as essential to awakening as the Buddhas. He then traces the Four Immeasurables — love, compassion, sympathetic joy, equanimity — showing how each risks a spiritual trap (clinging, despair, self-satisfaction, apathy) and how each corrects the next. The session ends with a guided meditation expanding goodwill from oneself outward through friend, neutral person, enemy, and all beings in every direction.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 18 3 PA 1998 06 24.mp3
UUID: 03da16a5-ca87-4139-9628-bf4cb1a65cb3
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: Three Principal Aspects of the Path 1988-1990 (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 1998-06-24
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 44.4 minutes
Words: ~4,312
It occurs as an authentic response to the needs of others and also to our own needs. But within the confines of our own needs, you know, they we can only hope for limited and partial growth. But the needs of others are unlimited. And they’re very differentiated. In this sense, fulfilling responding to the needs of others, then we can hope for unlimited growth and universal character, developing all our qualities in which responding to the universal needs of the differentiated types of sentient beings, of all the possible needs that sentient beings may have.
So this is how we can actualize all our potentials by responding to all the various needs of all the various sentient beings. We are forced to actualize all our various potentials. Within the realm of our own individual ego, the needs are limited and exclusive, only partial. So we could in fulfilling those needs, in fulfilling our own limited needs, we’re only going to develop grow to a limited and exclusive fashion, only partially. But fulfilling the needs of infinite number of sentient beings with all their various possibilities of needs, of wants, then we can we’re going to have to call upon a great our complete reservoir of potentialities within ourselves.
So this is the way we can make a leap onto fresh ground, you know. Responding to the needs of others is the way of overcoming our cowardice, the fear of change, this resistance to change. The way we can summon up the inner strength necessary to crawl out of our cocoons. My teacher used to one of my teachers in India, after he had been teaching at the Buddhist at the Tibetan library of works and archives for about six or seven years. You know, six days a week, three hours a day to these westerners, you know, coming, coming, coming to class sitting there day after day after day after day.
And he used to say, you know, I’m waiting for one of you to fly away. And he was talking he was giving a talk about bodhicitta, about this mind of enlightenment, waiting for somebody to, you know, to crawl out of their cocoon, which we are so attached to and fly. This has brought about the most skillful, the most profound is when it becomes the innermost necessity to fulfill the needs of others. You know, we draw we draw upon the necessary strength, which we would never realize within the bounds of ego, to really bring about a complete transformation, a real revolution in our lives. Now there’s a story about two Christian hermits in the Egyptian desert.
I don’t think probably perhaps in the in fifteen hundred years ago. And they both were very renowned for giving people would go to them and make confessions, and each one of the hermits would give very harsh penance. And those are those ones who were on a heavy guilt trip, they would go to that that father, that hermit. And the other one was very very soft, very peaceful sort of fellow. And The ones who didn’t want to have to go through much penance, go to this other hermit.
It so happened that about the same time, some doubts began to arise in their mind about their vocation, about the whole question about what they were doing, you know, the whole meaning of their life. And so they began to disturb each of them in their own way. And they thought they had, you know, they had heard about each other from other people and they thought perhaps this other person sounds very wise, perhaps this other hermit, I should I should go visit him. And so they both set off at the same time to visit each other. And while they were about halfway between their two caves, they both camped at the same place for the night.
And one of the hermits began to speak to the other and said, know, know, where are you going? And he said, well, I’m going to visit a very wise hermit who lives in the cave not not far from here. He said, why are you going to do that? He said, I have developed some doubts about I have been a hermit in my cave for many years now, but now I’m beginning to question my vocation, what I’m doing. And so the so the second hermit, he said nothing.
He said, I’m that father you’re going to see. I’m that hermit you’re looking for. Come back to my cave and you can stay with me. So they went back to the cave and the second hermit never spoke of the doubts that he had had. A year went by and the first hermit would assist the second hermit in his practices, in his prayers, and he would also be around when the second hermit would take confession of the people who came.
And after about a year, the second hermit came the first hermit came to the second and said, you know, now my doubts are completely cleared up after having listened to you, you know, in the you the way you’ve explained and your wisdom and and your real compassion and your knowledge, intimate knowledge of God. I have no doubts in my mind anymore, and I want to thank you. And now I’m going to go back to my cave and continue my life as a hermit in solitude. And the second hermit said, you know, when we met that night on the desert, I was just like you, no different. I had grave doubts about my vocation, what I was doing, you know, about the meaning of my life.
And the first said, why didn’t you tell me then? Why didn’t you let me know you were in the same position as I was? And the second hermit said, at that moment one of us had to be strong or we would have both been lost. So even though, you know, he was experiencing the same doubts, the same difficulties, one of them had to be strong for the other because, you know, they would have both been lost. They would have both lost perhaps their vocation.
But by one assuming, by drawing upon some unknown reservoir of strength, then eventually they both found their way. They both were saved. So this is very much in some way the situation that we’re in. And accepting, even though perhaps you aren’t able, accepting some responsibility for another, even though you’re perhaps in the same position, you begin to not only help in solving the other person’s problems, but you begin to draw upon some inner strength, some inner wisdom, which you would never have been able to draw upon had you not been willing to take on this burden, this responsibility of another person. And in this we begin to not only solve the other person’s problems, we begin to simultaneously begin to solve our own difficulties as a byproduct of assuming the responsibilities of others.
You know, I received a letter from a Tibetan friend of mine who lives in Melbourne. He’s a translator there. He had visited in, I think, February here in Adelaide. And he wrote back and he said, You know, sentient beings are like a wish fulfilling gem. This is very much of a Tibetan attitude.
Now, what does that mean? You know, to the degree you’re willing to accept some, you know, in a healthy context, some responsibility for others’ happiness, to that same decree you’re going to find your own happiness which you’ve always been looking for and which you have never really found. In this way, sentient beings are like a wish fulfilling gem. It says in the Bodhicaryāvatāra, the engaging in the bodhisattva’s deeds, we depend as much upon sentient beings as we do the Buddhas to attain enlightenment. Why is it we respect the Buddhas and not sentient beings?
In a way sentient beings are more important because in dependence upon sentient beings we can develop love, we can develop compassion, we can practice generosity, patience, ethics of helping others. You know, all the six perfections and all the various practices are all dependent upon the kindness of sentient beings. And it’s said that all the happiness in the world, in the universe that beings experience comes about through helping others, cherishing others, and all the suffering in the world, in the universe, which comes about comes about through cherishing ourselves, seeking our own our own our own happiness to the exclusion of others. And in the tonight, just had a Guru Puja offering to the spiritual master. And there’s one verse in there which says, The Buddhas work only for this for the sole benefit of others, while the childish work only for their own benefit.
Seeing the advantage of one and the failings of others, what need is there to say more? So by accepting the responsibility, working for the benefit of others, we’re going to grow. We’re going to have to grow. You know, we said, need is like the mother, the mother of growth. And the needs of sentient beings are so great that we’re going to have to grow if we accept that responsibility, if we accept that need upon ourselves.
You know, it’s like, you know, I hear a lot about mothers. I’m not a mother. You know, but I can appreciate, especially when parents have have a, you know, have a very small baby, for example. And I know, especially in the respect to the mothers, but also I’m sure with the fathers, mothers pushing themselves and parents pushing themselves beyond their preconceived limits of their physical and mental capacities order to fulfill the needs of their children, the baby, who without your benefiting, without your comforting, without your help is going to die. You know, like a mother who has to wake up six times in the middle of the night to to breastfeed her baby.
You know, even though she’s tired, even though she’s just praying for a good night’s sleep, still she’s willing, pushing herself beyond her own egotistical selfish limits to fulfill the needs of that baby. And this is a real area where most people are able to have some experience of selflessness with respect to their children or perhaps with respect to parents sometimes, or respect to anyone who you feel this bond with and you’re willing to put yourself out to some degree, you go beyond what you might like to do. You know, it’s quite easy when the sun is shining and we love one another to be compassionate, to say nice words, to help one another. But when things become difficult, when the ego says, no, I’ve had enough now, let’s to go beyond that, then that’s real growth. Because, essentially, growth is going to be transcending either conventionally or ultimately beyond the bounds of our ego.
So, you know, if we can go beyond the bounds of our self-cherishing, our selfishness, and this is a real way to grow, and the way we do this, the way one way we can do this is by filling fulfilling the needs of cherishing others. So in in fulfilling the needs of others, you know, participating in the lives of other people. Participating means not only, you know, not only to receive others into our life, but to give our lives over to others. So the the four immeasurable immeasurable love, immeasurable compassion, immeasurable sympathetic joy, and immeasurable equanimity. Suppose we have a son who becomes an unbearable young man.
It may be hard for us to love him. That is natural. In order to be loved, a person should be lovable. If our son has become difficult to love, we will be very unhappy. We wish we could love him, but the only way we can is to understand him, to understand his situation.
We have to take our son as the subject of our meditation. Instead of taking the concept of emptiness or some other subject, we can take our son as the concrete subject of our meditation. We don’t blame our son. We just want to understand why he has to become like that. Through this method of meditation, we find out all the causes near and far that have led to our son’s present state of being.
The more we see, the more we understand. The more we understand, the easier it is for us to have compassion and love. Understanding is the source of love. Understanding is love itself. Understanding is another name for love.
Love is another name for understanding. So all these various Four Immeasurables are a way of understanding another human being, another sentient being. And these are just understandings. The ego is based is founded upon closed minded ignorance, misunderstanding or non-understanding. Misunderstanding, basic misunderstandings of ourselves and our relationships and other people.
You know, as long as we as long as we relate to people in terms of hatred instead of love, in terms of cruelty instead of compassion, instead in terms of jealousy, instead of sympathetic joy, in terms of attachment, instead of equanimity, there can never really be any deep understanding. No real wisdom. There’s no real growth, no real discovery. Separately, each of these four immeasurables is an antidote for a particular you know, coarse negative pattern of ego, hatred, cruelty, jealousy, attachment, each of them separately. But there’s also an interrelation between these four as a unit whereby they reinforce each one another.
They counteract the tendency for these to degenerate into the spiritual materialism, some negative fixation. So we can begin with the first, this immeasurable love. So love is an affirmation of another person’s worth, you know, their value in actively concerning ourselves about their happiness. This person is of value to you. You know, this person perhaps people have some intrinsic value outside of what they can do for you.
You know, it’s non self referential. You know, that’s when it becomes egotistical. This is the possibility of the negative fixation of all of these. But, you know, these various feelings, love compassion, they’re very strong affections. So they can turn into their negative counterpart.
You know, these very strong emotions, they can easily degenerate into something negative. For example, love may turn into clinging. You know, we said love was holding the object of value and concerning ourself that it’s happy, it can degenerate. And to simply seeing that value and referring it back to yourself of how that person is valuable because that person can make you happy. You know, we no longer hold them as valuable in themselves and concern ourselves with their happiness, but they only value to the degree that they can bring ourselves happiness.
But this tendency is counteracted, is counteracted by compassion. You know, rather than seeing people merely as objects for our own use, devaluing them or simply valuing them to the extent that they can benefit us, we begin to focus on the fact that they’re suffering. So we know this acts as a counteracting agent, and we develop the wish to remove that suffering. But compassion can turn into overwhelming feelings of helplessness and despair. And there are so many so many suffering beings in the world, human beings, what to say of all kinds of beings in the world, you know?
And they’re suffering in so many ways, and I really can’t even help even the people, you know, that I that I’m that I know, that I am friendly with, that you know, what can I do for all these sentient beings? You know? So this this feeling of wishing sentient beings to be good to not suffer can easily degenerate into feelings of despair and helplessness. This is too much suffering. So in order as a counteracting agent to this, we develop immeasurable sympathetic joy.
We focus upon the happiness even though it’s only fleeting, even though it’s only limited. We still refocus upon the happiness that sentient beings do enjoy. The happiness that they do experience and we share in this happiness. When you see someone creating the causes of happiness, and you have a vicarious happiness, sharing in that happiness that they’re experiencing at that moment, and this counteracts this tendency of compassion to degenerate into despair and sadness. Okay, but there’s an even sympathetic joy has a negative fixation.
It can degenerate into vicarious self satisfaction. We’re simply focusing upon the happiness of others because it’s really pleasurable. It’s a real trip for us to share in the happiness of everybody. We just begin to exclude other sentient beings who aren’t particularly happy at that moment. So we have to develop a counteracting agent to that, and this is immeasurable equanimity.
We begin to see that though this particular person might be experiencing happiness at this moment, but the predominant, the overwhelming situation of sentient beings is dissatisfaction, and even this happiness that this person is experiencing is fleeting. It’s not going to last forever. And so we develop a feeling of equality towards all sentient beings. We develop a concern not only for those beings who are bringing us happiness, you know, who are sources of happiness for us, but also for those sentient beings who are not sources of happiness for us, a feeling of equality, equanimity. But again, equanimity can degenerate.
It can turn into simply becoming apathy. Simply the unfeelingly, without any feelings, regarding all beings that are the same and becoming indifferent to them. You have the equal attitude toward all sentient beings, but you’re simply indifferent. It doesn’t matter. You feel unrelated to them equally.
So this tendency is countered by immeasurable love, reaffirming their value, their intrinsic worth, and actively concerning yourself about their happiness. So in this way, these four immeasurables are not only specific antidotes to grosser negative patterns of ego. But through their interrelatedness, through their interdependentness, do not allow these sublime thoughts, feelings, love, compassion, sympathetic joy, equanimity to be incorporated in the bounds of ego, to be negatively fixated, to degenerate into mere sentimentality and mere nostalgia, feelings which would be counterproductive to growth. Love in the Buddhist sense of the term is love which is really love only when it’s impartial, when it’s felt impartially for all sentient beings. That is when it’s felt with equanimity.
Compassion is love in response to the suffering of others. And sympathetic joy is response to the happiness of others. So it’s all they are all intermingling, supporting, sort of a unit, different aspects of one thing, and we break them up into four aspects. In the West, it’s often said I don’t know if it’s often, sometimes it’ll be said that we can learn to love all sentient beings. Say not all sentient beings, they don’t say that.
We can learn to love people or humanity. Yeah. We can learn to love humanity by learning to love one person. And I think I think Buddhism would say that we can only ever really love one person when we love all sentient beings. But we have to begin somewhere, you know, with our limited exclusive feelings of love love which were mixed with attachment.
That’s what we have to work with at the moment. That’s kind of our spark of enlightenment, enlightened thought. So we work with this and we direct it toward a person we naturally feel loved toward, even though it’s exclusive, even though it’s mixed with attachment, and we begin to, you know, to read it out to other, you know, to all other sentient beings. We work at this, refining it, developing it. So those are the Four Immeasurables.
This is, you know, this is what we do every more or less every Friday night. And this is going to be more or less the basis for these two systems of meditation, which are by which we use to develop the mind of enlightenment, the awakening heart, by which we open our hearts to others. Is four immeasurables. The others are just very skillful means of developing each of these four immeasurables in different ways, different avenues of approach. But ultimately, it’s just one state of selflessness, of love, compassion, equanimity, and joy, in others’ happiness.
So perhaps we can meditate for a short time. So first consider your your difficulties, your problems. You have to confront these dissatisfactions 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 the best you can not to repeat them again in the future. You can begin again.
And however you may conceive of yourself, whatever identity you may hold to, you can change, you can grow, you can become anything that you want to be, you can begin again. For the present, we have to accept ourselves, all the various parts of ourselves, even the parts that we perhaps don’t like, and become friends with those parts. And be gentle with ourselves and wish ourselves well, wish ourselves happiness. May I be happy, may I not suffer, may I grow and find peace. Now think of someone that you like, that you love, someone of the same sex, and imagine that person in front of you.
And recall all the good times that you shared, all the happiness that you’ve enjoyed together, the kindness that this person has shown you. Indirect radiate out the positive feelings which naturally arise, feelings of concern that they’d be happy, wishing them happiness, may not suffer. May all your desires come true. May you find peace. Now think of someone you neither like nor dislike, someone you feel unrelated to, indifferent to.
Imagine that person in front of you. And try to go beneath the superficial appearances which we cling to, which we judge people by, whether they’re male or female, rich or poor, educated, uneducated, beautiful or ugly, old or young, try to go beneath all those superficial appearances down to the very essence of that person. If there’s someone there who wants to be happy and doesn’t want to suffer exactly like yourself, no difference. And just as we wish our own self happiness, wish this person happiness as a reflection about how we feel about ourselves deep down, Since this person is essentially the same, may you be happy? Now think of someone who disturbs your mind, who you have problems with, someone you don’t like.
And imagine that person in front of you. This person who wants to be happy and doesn’t want to suffer just like yourself. And perhaps their way of finding their happiness, eliminating their suffering, has come in conflict with your way of finding your happiness. Eliminating your suffering is just a conflict of egos, of self interest. You’ve hurt others either intentionally or unintentionally in the past to find the happiness that you were looking for and now this person has done the same to you.
And just as you have to begin to forgive yourself for making mistakes, for hurting others, you have to begin to forgive this person for hurting you. So just for the moment, set aside this anger, this grudge. Try to see someone just like yourself, just doing the best they can to get some happiness out of life, being very confused about how to go about it, and making many mistakes along the way, and wish them happiness as you would yourself. Now imagine all four of these people together yourself and these three others. And try to see them from the point of view that they’re essentially the same in wanting happiness and not wanting to suffer.
And from that point of view, radiate out without any bias positive feelings equally to all four of these people. And all the people in this room, special people taking responsibility for their lives, their happiness, caring people. I wish everyone in the room happiness. Direct radiate out positive feelings, wishing success and happiness to everyone in the room. And all the people on the block watching television, eating supper, cooking, reading the paper, getting ready for bed, Whatever they do, whatever they say, they do it and say it in order to find happiness.
So we radiate out positive feelings, wishing them the happiness that they’re all looking for. And all the people in Adelaide, in the cars and buses on the streets, their homes, radiate out positive feelings to everyone in Adelaide. Spreading out, extending out further and further, radiating out to all of South Australia, all the people, animals, insects. Further and further, opening your heart, expanding your mind. Alice Springs, Perth, Darwin, Brisbane, Sydney, Canberra, Melbourne, Hobart, the entire country.
Further and further. New Zealand, the entire southern hemisphere, Enveloping the entire world in your heart is concerned for their happiness, for their well-being. All the people, black, white, red, yellow, all the animals, all the insects, everything that lives on the earth is touched by your caring. And radiating out into space in all the ten directions, further and further without limit. To finally, without any boundaries, without any center, pervading all of space, the wish, may all things be happy.
May all things be happy. We’ll dedicate the positive energy that we create in our practice. So these merits, may I soon attain the enlightened state of Guru Buddha, and may I lead every sentient being without exception to that state. May the precious bodhicitta not yet born arise and grow. May that born have no decline, but increase furthermore.
Thank you.