Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Ven Jampa Gendun opens this 46-minute session with a striking image: the neurotic mind is a big cow that needs a large pasture to run itself out before it finally settles and eats grass. This anchors a practical guided introduction to mindfulness of breathing — posture, the counting technique, and the attitude of gentle noting, like training a puppy rather than scolding it. He then unpacks the refuge prayer in plain terms, defining enlightenment as three qualities: clear awareness, overflowing love and compassion, and inexhaustible creative energy. The session closes by introducing Tsongkhapa’s Three Principal Aspects of the Path, a text to be studied over the coming series. The first aspect — usually translated as renunciation — is reframed as growing out of the compulsive habit of grasping and repeating past pleasures, not giving anything up. Accessible to newcomers and those just beginning formal practice.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 1987 09 25 3 P A P.mp3
UUID: 67e2ccdc-050c-48b6-b45b-5ac627fba63c
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: Three Principle Aspects of the Path 1987-1988 (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 1987-09-25
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 46.1 minutes
Words: ~4,864
That’s probably the most skillful way we can deal with our problems. It may not seem you know, you’re having problems with your relationships, you’re having worries, difficulty. So it seems like it’s a more direct means to actually go confront the problem, to go deal with whoever you’re having difficulties with, for example. You know, if you’re not if you’re worried about money, go out and make some money. If the job’s not going well to to find a new job.
But actually, most of our problems are are seen in a context in the context within the environment of our own mind. Most of our problems are purely a projection of our own mind. So depending upon the state of our mind, depending upon the texture, the tone, the mood, the quality of our mind, the major problems become minor ones and the minor ones become unnoticed. They are no longer a problem. So meditation is a way of it’s an expression of our willingness to be real realistic about our problems.
It’s also an expression of our compassion for ourselves. Meditation is not many things. It’s not a way of you know, we aren’t trying to see color lights, vision, stars, cosmic sounds. Are trying to achieve any particular trances. It’s simply consciously creating some space to help us expose the neurotic patterns of our mind and to work with them.
To work with our self deception and to stop the speed. Stop acting and do nothing in the sense of continuous neurotic patterns of achievement, ambition, competitiveness, and all the patterns of our neurotic mind. We just let the big cow of neurotic mind have a big pasture and it runs around and it runs around and finally it sees there is no sense. There is nothing confining it. The best sense is a big pasture and finally the big cow’s neurotic mind just starts eating grass and it eats and it eats and finally it falls asleep.
But we aren’t trying to produce any hypnotic trances or restful states of mind either. You know, if you’re seeking through meditation to create a restful state of mind, and you hear this very often, Meditation is a great vehicle to calm your mind, to find rest to achieve a restful state of mind, to relax. If you’re trying to create a restful state of mind, you’re going to have to be on guard to see whether your mind is restful or not. That very paranoia that your mind not might your mind might not be restful is going to disturb your mind. You know, the very idea of trying to relax, try hard to relax, it’s a self defeating, isn’t it?
So we’re not even trying to relax. We’re not trying to do anything for once in our life. It’s very difficult. It’s a it’s a very healthy state of mind. You know, in many ways, it’s it’s perhaps not it’s a new idea to me when I became got involved in meditation in Buddhism.
It’s not perhaps commonly seen in the West, but excessive thinking, for example, is pathological. You know, I was trained to think, think very well at the school I went to. I went to the Buddhist School of Dialectics and we debated perhaps between two and three hours a day, five to six days a week, very formally, very rigidly. And so my mind has been trained fairly well in thinking, in the process of thinking logically. And I began to see that the thinking process was of tremendous benefit, tremendous use, but it had its limit.
There was a time when we didn’t need to think, when it was more healthy not to think, to use other factors of our mind, other qualities of our being. And we tend to think, again, tend to think that we have to think. If we are not thinking, we are not going to solve our problems. This is pathological. This is unhealthy attitude.
There is a time we make use of thought and there is a time when the thinking process, the rationalization, the intellectual faculty of mind is of no use. It’s actually a hindrance. It’s actually harmful. So we are beginning to train the mind, to begin to control the mind, to subdue the mind. And we do this with a very simple technique of mindfulness of the breathing.
It’s not sophisticated in the sense that it’s not exotic. There are no mysterious visualizations that we do, symbolisms, sounds, etcetera. It’s a very simple process and we just are trying to watch this process to be here and now. You know, the the goal of the technique is at the immediate present. We’re simply trying to be aware of a simple process without getting sidetracked.
But we aren’t trying to run away from anything, from our problems, our difficulties, you know, we aren’t escaping from what’s happening in life. We will begin to see our problems more clearly. We begin to create some space where we get to know ourselves. We begin to accept ourselves. Just a simple process.
Accepting ourselves with a critical intelligence. We perhaps see faults in ourselves but that’s our starting point. If you keep repressing, keep hiding the negative aspects of yourself, how are you ever going to open up to others, communicate openly with others when all your communication must be controlled since you only want to show one side of yourself, one positive aspect of yourself. But we don’t even know ourselves. This gives us a chance to begin to see ourselves without judgment.
Whatever arises, we simply watch it and note thinking. It’s merely a simple process, a simple phenomenon of thought arising. It will abide and then it will pass away. So we are watching the breath, the thoughts arising, thinking, we just note it, and then return to the breath without any judgment, without thinking good or bad, healthy, unhealthy, whatever, interesting, not interesting. So we have to make some firm determination not to get on the train of our thoughts, merely observe the thought and come back to the breathing.
The very instant that you become aware that your mind is strayed from the object of breathing, bring it back to the breathing, bring it back to the breath. So in this way, you know, we pick they can begin to see things as they actually are because we’re not trying to hide anything. We’re not trying to magnify anything, we’re not trying to live in our dreams, trying to see how we would like things to be, fantasizing about them. We’re just seeing a very simple process, straightforwardly, and it’s a matter of training our mind and just simply seeing what is. So I think everybody knows I was going to go through the posture of it.
Perhaps it’s not necessary. I think the main posture, the main importance is to keep the back comfortably straight. You know we can talk about sitting in the the lotus posture. Leg crossed over another, you know, the various aspects of the posture, it’s most important that you be comfortable. Should be you should have a sense of confidence, a firmness in your posture.
The firmness in your posture, the sense of confidence as you’re grounded, that you’re not going to fall over any minute, will reflect in your mind. So we can sit in a comfortable cross legged posture with our back straight. If you can put your right hand in your left if you like. That’s the way it’s done in Tibetan tradition. The thumb is touching.
The neck slightly bent forward. The back straight. The tongue against the the behind the teeth where it meets the hard palate. The lips should be held natural. The teeth should be held natural, not clenched.
And if you can, it’s best to keep your eyes open. Just partially. Just letting the the upper lid rest on the lower lid. So there’s just a slit of light. Something to keep the mind stimulated slightly so it doesn’t we don’t fall asleep.
And looking down perhaps to a spot in front of you or just along the sides of the nose. But the main thing is to be firm and comfortable in your posture and to keep a straight back. We can talk about our attitude. As I said, our attitude is one of acceptance, whatever rises. We have to be gentle with ourselves in the sense that the idea that we’re trying to achieve perfect meditation is just an ego trip and that’s what we’re trying to transcend eventually.
And we can begin it with being reasonable with ourselves. One of the natures of the ego is it likes to go to extremes one way or the other. It’s not a quality of the ego that it’s balanced, that it’s reasonable. So we want to be reasonable with ourselves in attitude of not getting uptight with ourselves, thinking that we should be perfect meditators. Whenever we find our mind strained, that we are agitated, that our mind won’t stay on the object, think how terrible we are and we get upset with ourselves.
This is of no use. This is prolonging the neurotic patterns of our egoism and that’s what we are trying to go beyond. So very gently, like you are training a puppy, again and again bring your mind back to the object of the meditation, the breath, again and again. If you get uptight with the puppy then you’re never going to be able to train it. You will not have a good relationship either and pretty soon you’re going to give up.
It’s not going to go well. Very gently put the puppy back on the paper or whatever. Put the mind back on the breath. Over and over. This is the way we train a puppy.
And over and over. Again, it gets very boring. Boring is a good sign. If we persevere through that boredom, we are going to persevere through our neurotic patterns of our mind which constantly need to be entertained. There’s no reason why we have to be entertained constantly.
We can begin to recognize more subtle pleasures, more subtle types of happiness and the gross stimulus that we’re always craving. We can begin to appreciate sitting quietly and watching our breath. So we don’t indulge any thoughts. We don’t try to resist any thoughts. We just note them.
This process of noting. It’s a very simple process, but it works because it makes sure that you’re aware of what is happening, what is the mind attending to. If it’s thinking, then note thinking. If it’s hearing, note hearing. Someone just close the door and they’re hearing pain, seeing.
Right? So you know what the mind is attending to constantly by using this this technique. It’s only a technique called noting. So we’re just going to watch the breath. You can use the technique of counting, but it’s just watching the general pattern of the breathing.
Just knowing that you’re breathing in. You’re mentally not verbally, mentally noting. I’m going to say it, but you would think that in, breathing in, you’re going say breathing in, just the word in, in, out, and then you can count one, in, out, two, in, out, three, go up to five. When you get to five, come back down to one, go up to six, One seven eight nine and then ten. Then come back down to one again.
We’ll drop the technique of counting. In, out, one. In, out, two. Okay. So we’ll do this for a while and then we’ll recite the verse of going for refuge.
Recite a refuge prayer. To the Buddha, the Dharma and the Sangha, I go for refuge in time, enlighten Through the merit I create by practicing the Dharma, may I attain Buddhahood for the sake of all beings. Through the Buddha, the Dharma and the Sangha, I go for refuge in time enlightened. Through the merit I create by practicing the Dharma, 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 the Dharma, may I attain Buddhahood for the sake of all beings. Go for refuge to the Buddha and the Dharma and the Sangha. Going for refuge is a commitment you know, if we’re actually going for refuge. It’s quite easy to say the words, isn’t it? Lama Yeshe once said, you know, even if we were to say the words, the refuge formula, this verse a hundred thousand times, the mere saying of the words probably is of very little benefit.
It’s you know, the words are trying to lead us into a particular state of mind, an actual going for refuge. There’s some movement of the mind, something some process that’s occurring in the mind. You know, it’s commitment. You know, we’re committing ourselves. It’s more than more than just intellectual or more than our commitment of our will or our emotions, our entire being.
We go for refuge to the Buddha, you know, to whatever to growth, to developing ourselves, to sanity, to mental health. We go for refuge to the Dharma, to truth, to reality. We go for refuge to the process whereby we actualize our sanity, the process by where we actually grow. And we go for refuge to the Sangha of the spiritual community, which is the support of the spiritual community in which all this is made possible. So if we go for refuge to the Buddha, we have to know a little bit about what that means, about what mental health means, about what it means to be a sane, spontaneous, loving human being.
You know, we get the ultimate refuge is our own enlightenment, ultimately. Never. What what does that mean? What is enlightenment? It’s a pretty big word.
So try to break it up a little bit. It’s mainly three things. We can talk about enlightenment having three main qualities. Okay. First, there’s an awareness.
An awareness of how things really are. You know, we were talking about before when we were doing mindful ness and breathing. I’ve seen things how they really are, not how we would like them to be, not how we remember them to be, not how we would wish them to be, be, but how they are. A knowledge that sees things directly, clearly, and truly, You know, free of all misconceptions, all wrong ways of thinking, all obscurities, compulsions, conditions, prejudices, a state of pure, clear awareness and knowledge so that knowing how things really are. And this is what we can begin with in a simple practice of mindfulness and breathing.
We can know something once in our lives. We know that we’re breathing. We know what it is to breathe in. We know what it is to breathe out clearly, directly. It’s a very simple process, but built upon this awareness, this purity of thought, this knowledge of knowing exactly what we’re doing, living in the here and now, we can develop one of the three main aspects of an enlightened mind.
The seed is already there. This pure factor of awareness, of knowing. So secondly, it is a state of intense, profound, overflowing of your life, love and compassion. Like it’s often compared to the love of a mother for her only child. But this love of a mother for her only child is extended to all sentient beings, all living beings equally without any partiality.
This is how an enlightened mind feels. The feeling of an enlightened mind. A deep a deep burning desire that all sentient beings should be freed from their suffering, that all sentient beings develop and grow, That all sentient beings achieve enlightenment. A longing, a very deep yearning. This is the feeling of an enlightened mind.
Not only that, not only the yearning and longing, but accepting the responsibility to bring it about, the sole responsibility. You know, I’m quiet. I can’t just sit here and wish. I have to do something. So there’s a movement.
It’s not passive. It’s a very active mind. Wanting to bring this wish into reality. And third, it consists in a state of an of an inexhaustible mental and spiritual energy. We can talk about energy.
We can talk about create action, creative activities, spontaneous. It’s it’s a responding to the needs and the sufferings of others. It’s responding to our environment, unconditioned freedom. So when in Buddhism we talk about enlightenment or we talk about Buddhahood, we go for refuge to the Buddha, to the enlightened mind, to our own ultimate, to our own enlightenment. We’re going for refuge to a state of knowledge, of awareness, a state of experience of love, compassion, and creative activity, to creative energy.
This is ultimately where we’re going to solve all our problems. This is ultimately where we’re going to fulfill our potential of what it means to be a human being. This is the ultimate destiny of our evolution. This is our refuge. We go for refuge to the Dharma.
So what is the Dharma? What does it mean? If we’re going to go to refuge to the Dharma, we have to have some feeling for what it is, what are its characteristics, what are its quality. So it simply most, it is that which helps us bridge the gap between our present ignorance and knowledge, between our present hatred and self-cherishing to love and compassion. It’s that which helps us bridge the gap between our present attachment and our unskillful actions to unconditioned generosity, to creative activities, to skillful activities, skillful states of mind.
Essentially, it’s anything which helps an ordinary human being to develop into a Buddha. That’s the Dharma, to the state of enlightenment, whatever helps us grow. I go for refuge to the Sangha. You know, people this as a group, people have made an individual choice. They have accepted responsibility for their own lives, their own happiness.
We get together. We all know where we’re coming from, and we have some idea of why we’re here. We don’t have to keep reestablishing the commonality of our grounds, our common grounds. We’ve decided to develop ourselves. This is a a mutual understanding.
You want to grow as a human being. And we’re committed to the idea, growth, the development, enlightenment to all the aspects of enlightenment, to knowledge and awareness, committed to developing love and compassion, Committed to creative activities that is responding skillfully to the needs of others. The spiritual community is extremely important our spiritual growth because within this context where we understand where each of us are coming from, you know, why we’re here, and we raise the level of communication. Generally, where are we communicating from? Sometimes they talk about the various chakras, Chakras are the psychic centers, energy centers in our body.
If you go into a singles bar, where are you going to commute from? Where are you going to communicate from? What level is what level are you communicating at? Can you get much higher than your sex chakra? Difficult, isn’t it?
Maybe you have a friend. Perhaps he’s not particularly spiritually inclined, but he’s a good friend. You enjoy each other’s company. Where are you going to communicate from? What level can you raise your your level of communication?
Automatically, when a spiritual community comes together in that environment, we’re forced to communicate on a higher level than we normally do. Our awareness, our spiritual understanding is automatically raised in that environment. It becomes a mandala, encouraging, fostering, nourishing all that’s best within that refuge. Buddhism has faith in the idea of enlightenment. Why?
Because it has faith in the individual, in our individual potentials. And then we have to have faith in ourselves, in our creative potential, our basic sanity. Faith is an affirmation of our basic goodness, of the basic goodness of life. We can believe in change. We can believe in ourselves.
But within us there is some sanity which is always seeking to work, which is always there to solve our problems. And in fact, life can be a happy, fulfilling, authentic experience. What’s interesting about Buddhism, in the end, we don’t have to believe in anything. That’s why some people say it’s not even a religion, but that doesn’t matter. It’s merely a word.
Buddhism does not ask us to believe in anything. It does not even ask us to believe in Buddhism. What it does, it asks something of us. It asks us to take the idea of enlightenment, of a life of wisdom, a life of love and compassion, a life of creativity. We take that as our practical working basis for our lives.
It asks us to make an experiment, to try, In many ways, essentially, ultimately, it’s this trying more than anything else which is the actual going for refuge. Simply trying. Trying to make wisdom, love and compassion and creative skillful activities the basis of your life. Trying. You don’t have to believe in it, but take that as your working basis and try.
If you try and you don’t need to repeat these words, you are constantly going for refuge. So we’re going to talk about three principal aspects of the path. You all have a copy by Tsongkhapa. He was a fourteenth century Tibetan master who along with everybody have? Along with Marpa, Milarepa, and Atisha, probably contributed made the greatest contribute contribution to the Buddhism of Tibet.
Founded upon his his writings, his teachings, his insights, one of the four spiritual traditions or sects of Tibetan Buddhism arose, the Gelug tradition. This little statue, a little image in front of it between the two pictures of Lama Yeshe and Lama Zopa on the top. Top. Below there, that’s the image of Tsongkhapa, sometimes called Jetsunpoche. So we’re going to discuss the three principal aspects of the path for the next six talks.
No. Not six. I don’t have any for a while. I don’t know. The three principal aspects of the path.
So what are the three principal aspects of the path? Okay. There there are many ways to express it. There are many ways to translate these terms. Sometimes it translates renunciation, bodhicitta, correct view.
Okay? Sometimes this renunciation is translated as the determination to what? No. The intention to definitely be liberated. Definitely the intention to definitely leave cyclic existence.
bodhicitta is the mind of enlightenment, if you like, So I have my own, you know, way of trying to look at it. What are the three principal aspects of the path? A path is something, you know, something we travel on, something which takes us from where we’re at now to where we want to go to, from the state of ignorance, if you like, confusion to knowledge, to understanding, to clarity, from hatred, self-cherishing, to love and compassion, from feelings of from our energy patterns being restricted, completely neurotic patterns, to being creative, open, spontaneous. So that’s a path and there’s three aspects to this path. Determining to grow, opening to others, and seeing into the way things are.
The three principal aspects of the path. Determining to grow, determining to change. One of the main reasons that we are caught up, that we continue to experience These cyclic patterns that we keep going through uncontrollably, compulsively. The difficulty that we keep reoccurring, the same problems that happen over and over and over again. Repeatedly moving from one dissatisfactory situation to another dissatisfactory situation simply because we do not recognize the source of our problems.
Without recognizing the source of our problems, we’re never going to be able to deal with them properly. We have to gain some perspective. Ultimately, we have to become disillusioned. Disillusioned grasping at these habitual patterns, habitual dissatisfactory pattern. You know, the way we relate with the world, the way we relate with ourselves.
You know, by creating this disillusionment, we can begin to create some space whereby we can develop skill and understanding and new ways of relating. Without creating this space, there’s no there’s no we are one with this pattern. Our difficulties our neurotic patterns in us are the same thing. We can never imagine us for us to be any other way. Our difficulties in us are the same thing, but actually we are not it.
We have to we want to begin to create a space between these our neurotic patterns of our mind. In creating the space, we can begin to solve our problem. There’s there’s some we can allow some fresh air to come in. No ways to relate, some skill. But unless we begin to push away, to move away, to emerge, that’s what the Tibetan word means.
The word is. It’s usually translated as renunciation, determination, to leave cyclic existence, whatever. It means definite emergence, literally. We begin to become fed up with particular dissatisfactory patterns of our mind, habitual, compulsive, cyclic nature of our problem. We begin to this very dissatisfactory quality is basic sanity, beginning to work your own wisdom, beginning to work on your problems to solve them.
It begins to push away to want to escape this particular pattern of mind. This very insight is going to lead you to freedom, to developing more skillful patterns. If you don’t get disgusted with the unskillful patterns, there’s no way you’re you’re going you’re going to develop skillful patterns. The natural sanity of the mind moving away from what we begin to actually recognize as pain, suffering. If you keep sticking your hand in fire, conceiving it as being a source of pleasure, you shouldn’t be surprised if you repeatedly burnt again and again and again.
It’s only when you begin to recognize fire as a source of pain that you are going to quit sticking your hand in it, that you are going to be disillusioned. This is sanity, isn’t it? The basic Buddha nature. Our basic potential to solve the problem. It’s working on our problem.
If we give it a chance, we have to create the space to give it a chance. But we’re attached to these patterns. You know? We’re stuck. Even though the even though they’re dissatisfaction, we’re stuck.
These patterns which ego uses to sustain itself, to gain security. So we have to, in some way, start moving away to create space between ourselves and these neurotic patterns of mind. And we want pleasure. That’s basic line of our existence, the bottom line. So we are not when we talk about determining to grow, renunciation, we aren’t renouncing pleasure.
Nor are we renouncing enjoying pleasure. What are we what are we renouncing? What are we trying to grow out of? That habitual effort that we make to pattern our pleasure, to make it conform to our past experiences. This is what we renounce.
We need a tendency to grasp and repeat due to the power of attachment. The tendency to grasp at pleasure and repeat pleasure due to the power of attachment. We’re trying to renounce our expectation of prolonging and repeating the same pleasure that we had before. We had pleasurable experience. We’re trying our damnedest to repeat that same pleasure again.
And if we get any pleasure, we try to prolong it as long as possible. And this which turns pleasure into pain, is seeking to repeat and prolong turns pleasure into pain. There’s nothing wrong with the pleasure. There’s nothing wrong with enjoying pleasure. It’s this habitual pattern mistaken way of relating, which turns pleasure into pain, which can turn turn enjoyable relationships, enjoyable situations into sources of suffering.
This is what we’re we’re now. Is what we’re trying to grow out of, to do to find new ways of relating, which go beyond this grasping, just trying to repeat and prolong. It’s being in the here and now isn’t it? Acceptance. It keeps coming back to this idea of this this simple meditation of mindfulness breathing.
Simply being there with what is now, accepting equanimity, whatever arises, experiencing it, letting it go. So there’s nothing wrong with pleasure. And the Buddhism has never said the Buddha never said that we shouldn’t be happy. On the contrary, he said we should. But it’s like grasping our exaggerating, distorting, polluting, clinging attitudes towards pleasure that must be renounced.
These attitudes. This attitude that we have to grow out of. So it’s not so much that we have to give up anything when we talk about renunciation. It’s not so much that we have to repress anything when we talk about growth. It’s not so much that we have to give up anything.
It’s just that we have to grow up, grow out of these unskillful neurotic patterns of our mind which we’re continually trying to grasp, repeat, and prolong past pleasures, present present pleasures.