Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Opening with an analogy about switching TV channels versus turning the television off entirely, Ven Jampa Gendun uses this 42-minute talk to introduce renunciation by examining saṃsāra as a compulsive system we must first recognize before we can exit. He argues that denial of the three marks of existence — suffering, impermanence, and selflessness — is the root of every psychopathological state, from obsession to phobia to depression. The bulk of the session traces how a woman window-shopping on a street takes “rebirth” from moment to moment as she encounters a man crossing toward her: contact, desire, craving, and becoming unfold automatically, with no freedom at any stage, making the Twelve Links of Dependent Origination vivid through a scene from ordinary daily life. The session closes with a brief loving-kindness reflection.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 1987 11 13 3 P A P.mp3
UUID: 300730eb-7ae7-41b8-a92f-e7aad81f76c3
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: Three Principle Aspects of the Path 1987-1988 (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 1987-11-13
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 42.6 minutes
Words: ~4,467
Suppose person a is watching television when person b comes into the room and shows evident displeasure with this situation. Person a may think he understands the problem and tries to remedy it by exiting the present system, that television program, clipping the channel now, looking for a better show. Person b may have a more radical concept of what it means to exit the system, namely to turn the television off. Of course there are cases where there is only a rare individual who have the vision to perceive a system which governs many people’s lives, a system which had never before even been recognized as a system. Then such people often devote their lives to convincing others that the system is there and it ought to be exited from.
The Buddha, he perceived a system which governed many people’s lives, it governed all ordinary people’s lives. He called this system cyclic existence, saṃsāra. Samsāra is a Sanskrit word. It simply means, we translate it as cyclic existence. He said it was characterized by three marks: suffering, impermanence, and selflessness.
And therefore it was dissatisfactory and should be exited from. So the path becomes a resolution of the tension between, on the one hand, becoming aware of and acknowledging these three marks of our lives, of the system that we’re caught up in, these three marks of suffering, impermanence, and selflessness. On the one hand, and cultivating an unwillingness, a stubborn refusal to acknowledge these three marks of our life, suffering, impermanence, and selflessness. And what happens during this process of tension between our actual experience of the three qualities of our system, of our lives, and our stubborn refusal to maintain that awareness, our refusal to acknowledge it. I think that we’ll see that every psychopathological phenomena has its root in a particular relationship to the three marks of existence.
We could trace every psychopathological form, system or complex, everything that we call severe neurotic or psychotic disturbance back to a highly sensitive and meaningful encounter with one of these three basic truths. The attempt to cover up the acknowledgment of these very simple facts has led to a lifelong struggle into one form or another of a psychopathology state psychopathological state. We will find that each psychopathological form, such as obsession, hysteria, phobia, depression, and various character aberrations, containing with it a denial, rejection, or struggle against the recognition of the texture of existence. It is like someone who refuses to accept that summer changes into fall. They dress inappropriately, and then they become ill.
So it is our refusal to acknowledge, first step become aware of suffering, the impermanence, and egolessness which leads to, as he’s pointing out, all pathological states, all neurosis, all psychosis. If we are willing to confront, if we’re willing to acknowledge them, to deal with them, to work with them, then we can develop the means to be able to relate with them skillfully, develop, relate with them in a skillful manner, and then finally ultimately to transcend these three marks of existence as we can transcend cyclic existence altogether. So we have to begin by recognizing the system. In order to develop the determination to be free of cyclic existence, to develop the determination to be free, to emerge from our problems, we have to recognize the fact that we’re involved in a system, that we are more or less trapped. We have to recognize the system as system being cyclic existence.
So traditionally, cyclic existence is described as the compulsive taking of contaminated aggregates under the force of actions, karma, actions, karma, and afflictive emotions, afflictive emotions such as desire, hatred, spite, jealousy, miserliness, whatever. Under this force of those afflictive emotions and karma, we are forced to take repeatedly, again and again, contaminated aggregates. Now what do we mean by contaminated aggregates? Essentially we’re talking about a mentality and materiality that is a mind and body which is predisposed to suffering. We have no choice in the matter.
This is kind of the significance which is necessary to be understood when we talk about psychoanalysis is we have no choice in the matter. We’re compulsively driven. We can talk about psychoanalysis as being compulsive, reoccurring pattern. There’s no option. We’re stuck.
This idea of unfreedom, of no control, of unmanageability occurs again and again. We’re caught up as if swept along in a raging stream. During the course of our life, we have almost no control if we don’t have awareness, if we don’t acknowledge the three signs, three marks of existence. Once we develop some awareness, we can develop some space, begin to exercise our wisdom, and begin to gain control, and slowly begin to emerge, to develop a skillful means to relate to these three marks of existence, and finally to transcend them all together. So I’m going to use an example in talking about this situation, recognizing the system that we’re in.
The system is like the existing, or I’ll call it compulsive recurring pattern, because I think it’s more meaningful. I’m going to use an example of a woman. So I hope no one minds. I am a male teacher, but I think it it works well, but it can also work just as well, you know, from the point of view of man. And I think I’m trying to make this possibility as meaningful as I can.
How this can this idea of reoccurring compulsive patterns, but compulsive reoccurring patterns operates every day of our lives. You know, we don’t have to talk about the next rebirth and rebirth after that and rebirth after that. We were reborn an infinite number of times in one day. You can see how this pattern operates in one moment of every moment of our day. So I’m going to use an example of a woman.
There’s a woman walking down the street, and she’s window shopping, and she’s looking in the store windows and enjoying the clothes and looking around. She has no particular conception of who she is at this time. She’s merely looking at the clothes in the window. She doesn’t conceive herself with any particular identity. So this is, you know, we can talk about this in a sense of this is the mentality of an intermediate state being.
You know, in the overall taking of rebirth, you know, one dies, enters into an intermediate state between the next rebirth, where the type of rebirth is being determined, what karma is going to throw you into your next rebirth. So this woman is walking down the street, and she doesn’t have any particular conception or feeling of any particular identity of who she is, no self referencing at this time. She looking at the clothes in the window, for example. She hasn’t taken rebirth yet. She’s sort of in that intermediate state.
But she is associated with a certain materiality. That is, she’s associated with a certain energy pattern that is a female body. She has a female body. Physically, she’s a woman. Mentally, she’s not conceiving herself as a woman at this point.
But because she’s now why did she take this particular energy pattern in her female body? This is from previous actions. Okay? She was forced to take this type of body. She grasped at this particular type of pattern, of energy pattern through the tendencies, through the habitual predisposition within her mind.
This pattern, this female body, is going to predispose her to react and relate with the world in certain very narrowly determined fashion. And the way she’s going to react with the world is beginning to be very much already set simply because she has a female body. And she didn’t take this body out of her own choice. She was forced to take this body. She didn’t she didn’t decide to take a female body.
So, you know, all her her worldview, all her values, and the creation of future tendencies, future patterns, future habits will all be developed in the context of having a female body in this case. So all her actions are going to be filtered, The way she looks at the world is going to be filtered through the context of having a female body. And also importantly, how the world looks at her is going to be in the context of the female body. And this in turn is going to determine how she sees the world seeing her. So it’s and this how she sees the world seeing her is going to further develop how she sees the world.
So already, her mental disposition is being controlled by the very fact that she has a female body, which she took without any choice. So now there’s a man coming down the street, on the other side of the street, and he sees the woman. Now this man, just like the woman, he’s compulsively taken a body. In this case, he grasped at a male body, a male energy pattern, particularly physical pattern, a male body. He did this due to his previous mental tendency, and he didn’t choose, he was forced to.
To. So this also forces him to relate with the world in a predetermined fashion, and how the world is going to relate with him, how he sees the world relating with him. The man sees the woman. He sees the woman’s body, and he sees it in a particular you know, in the context of a particular situation. So this seeing this woman’s body, an object appears to his mind.
This object acts as a condition to activate a latency, a predisposition. We talked about karma last week, how we can think of karma as an urge, an impulse towards a tendency, towards a particular train of thinking, to activate certain habitual patterns, an urge and impulse. When this complex of tendencies comes in contact with an object, it activates this tendency to act out. A train of thinking takes place. There’s no choice in this.
Purely a matter of cause and effect. So this he sees the woman in a particular context. He has certain predisposition. The woman acts as a condition to trigger certain impulses, certain urges, certain trains of thought, he now is going to relate to this situation in a very determined manner. So certain tendencies are going to arise, certain compulsive patterns are going to become played out.
It’s more of as if a program has been chosen, and he’s inserting it to be printed out. This is if he’s not aware. So now we’re we’re talking about two people who are unaware of of this existence of the program in itself. So he’s not aware that he has chosen. He has not chosen this situation, this reaction.
He hasn’t chosen this program. He’s not aware of the step by step interaction which is about to take place. You know, this is all a conditioned process, conditioned by culture, conditioned by social values, by previous tendencies, by past actions of body, speech, mind, by our conception of how we see ourselves, by our conception of how we view the outside world. So this is what he’s bringing to this situation, a certain mentality and a certain materiality which was all determined. You know, it’s influenced by what we call previous action, his karma.
No choice in it. He brings to the situation a particular mentality, a certain materiality which was determined and it’s going to determine how he interacts with this situation that’s being created. He’s not in control. So there’s no freedom in this situation, only conditioned reflexes, no reactive patterns in which he is totally unaware. So in dependence upon conceiving of that object as a woman, he reacts by conceiving himself as a man.
He becomes a man. Conceiving himself as a man, this will react this will activate further tendencies in his mind. A further mentality is being set up. So he’s inserting a program and desire begins to arise. He can see that this object is a woman, in reaction to that he can see it himself as a man, and now reaction to that, desire begins to run, and he mechanically, you know, as if in a trance, crosses over to the other side of the street.
So again, the woman, she sees the man. So seeing this object crossing the side of the street, crossing to her side of the street. Now there’s a couple options that opened up at this point. Due to her conditioning, due to her tendencies, there’s several possibilities of the way she could react, the way she could conceive of that object coming across the street. She could just see it as shape and form.
If she sees a particular shape and form coming towards her across the street. She could conceive of that as a human being coming across the street, as a subspecies of homo sapien coming across the street. She may, due to her past condition, conceive that a man is coming across the street. This is a possibility due to her past conditioning, how she will, what we call label, how she will conceive of that object coming across the street. How she conceives of that object will determine again what further tendencies, what further reactive patterns are going to be set off, what are going to be triggered.
So there’s all these steps which are occurring, none of which she has control of, none of which she is aware is taking place. So she could go on to think, you know, man, threatening man, fear, she walks over to the other side of the street. This interaction could take place. So both of these people are being driven by karma and afflictive emotion without any choice, without any freedom. You know, like as if two computers are playing a chess game.
They simply corresponding to the move of one, another program is set into motion and it moves and analyzes, moves the piece and that is returned by another program setting the motion and they just respond by setting the motion alternate programs in response to one another. And even when one wins, there’s simply a slight pause between a new program being put into motion, a new program being inserted. So this woman that we’re talking about, Later that day, this woman could be reborn as a, I’m going to get into this idea of rebirth, and be reborn as a teacher, a secretary, a nurse, a mother, a wife, a lover, household maker. So in each of these rebirths, it’s going to be reborn with a particular mentality and with all its associated sufferings and pleasures, a particular style. Now this is the idea of rebirth that I’m trying to get across, is being reborn through merely conceiving of yourself.
And once one has conceived of oneself as a particular, having a particular identity, setting into motion all the associative characteristics that one is conditioned to think come along with that particular identity. If you didn’t conceive of yourself as a mother, you would never suffer the suffering of a mother. That’s kind of a strange conception to think about, or if you didn’t conceive of yourself as a a woman, as a man. If somebody tells a about a bad joke about saying Jew, it’s a very derogatory remark about it too. And you happen to be a Jew, and you hear that, and you suffer, don’t you?
It hurts your mind. Why is that? Because you’re conceiving yourself as a Jew. It could disturb you because you think it’s bad in general to put down someone’s cause of religion, only because you’re conceiving yourself as a Jew would you could you associate that joke could that joke bring into suffering? in dependence upon how you conceive of yourself.
So in dependence upon how one conceives of oneself, one plays the role of that conception, the identifiers with that role. Depending on how well one plays that role, one is rewarded or punished according to that role. Self punishment, self reward. So even when one plays the role well, you know, one gets the maximum benefit from that role, there’s still a feeling of incompleteness and there’s some sort of dissatisfaction. There’s a feeling of some deep down hollowness or emptiness that you’re not quite in control, that we’re being driven.
So this driving force of the wheel, this continually having to re conceive of ourselves, to take, re identify, to exert our own self image again and again, taking on various roles. This wheel is being driven by ignorance. Ignorance is simply a confused mind which grasped at the self as a solid ongoing thing. You know what is actually just a collection of tendencies, mental events, physical events, is being grasped with something solid and outgoing. The feeling that there is something within us which is permanent, something which endures through all the days and changes of life.
We are struggling to make sure of the permanence and continuity and safety of this enduring core, the center and soul of our being, which we call I. For this we think to be the real man, the thinker of our thoughts, the feeler of our feelings, the knower of our knowledge. We do not actually understand that there is no security until we really realize that the I does not exist in this way. So everything is seen in terms of relating to the self. If it enhances the self, then we develop desire.
We want to draw towards us. If it’s in some way threatening to the self, we to make it up an aversion to hatred and push it away. So all these various actions, pulling toward, pushing away, are karma. They all leave an impression on the mind. They all condition some reactive pattern in our mind.
Within our mind and body, they develop some type of program. So this is where we can join this woman again. She has this particular mentality materiality, a particular program she’s walking down the street with. So she has certain tendencies, certain predispositions, and how she’s going she’s going to react to specific objects in a specific fashion. So she sees the man walking across the street towards her.
So this is contact. You know, we can talk about many of you might know about the Twelve Links of Dependent Origination, this evolution from ignorance to suffering, how it take place. The third link is called contact. You know, go through a series of beginning with ignorance and creating actions through the force of ignorance. These are making an impression upon the mind, developing a certain mentality and materiality, and make it to the point where then we actually make contact with the outside world, with a particular object.
So now she’s making contact with a particular object, this this man walking across the street. She already has her program set up for her. So as I said, now she can react in various possible ways, but it’s only a matter of reaction. There’s no choice involved. There’s no awareness.
She can react as if it’s just color and shape as a human being, as a man. Possibilities of conceiving what this object of contact is. Now contact leads to desire. That’s the seventh link in these twelve links of dependent origination. But why, you know, why does you conceive of this object as a man or not a man?
You this is coming from previous tendencies, previous patterns that she’s created before. He will act as a condition to trigger off certain trains of thinking, certain thought processes. These have certain tendencies. For example, she has had a tendency in the past to seek union with male energy, for example. This was a tendency which became associated with that mind to seek union with male energy.
So, you know, in reaction to this tendency, you know, his reaction with that condition, that man walking across the street, there develops a desire to complete that union with male energy in order to do so, she labels she conceives man. She’s forced to conceive of that object now as man. She didn’t conceive it as merely a human being. She didn’t conceive it as merely being shape and color, but as man due to this previous tendency to seeking to complete union with male energy. in dependence upon conceiving that object as man.
Now there develops a desire, the desire to gain union with male energy. This will lead to the this is simply a passive desire. When it’s activated, it becomes what we call craving, that is actively seeking the object that we before only desired. This again will activate another karma, which is the tenth link of Dependent Origination, usually called becoming or existence. This is the actual activation of a karma to become, to take existence, to take rebirth.
What type of rebirth is she taking? She’s conceived of this object as a man, there’s this desire to gain union with male energy, there’s a craving arose from that actively seeking to engage. This activates a karma, a tendency, a grasping pattern to a rebirth, that is she now conceives of herself as a woman. Before she was walking down the street, she was in intermediate state. She had no particular self identity.
At that moment she wasn’t considering herself as a woman. Now in reaction to this object, she takes rebirth as a woman. That is, she conceives of herself as a woman. She now feels not necessarily in thought and words, but she’s taking the identity of being a woman in that moment. She’s been reborn as a woman in that moment in reaction to this object coming across the street.
This pattern, this reactive pattern is played out. She didn’t have any control over it. Before, she had no particular identity. Now she identifies herself as a woman. So now we can other tendencies are going to be other karmas are going to be activated, other tendencies.
So not only So now there’s a man coming across the street, she conceived herself as a woman, she identifies herself as a woman. Further reactor patterns are set up, what type of man is coming across the street. Further tendencies, habituated ways of reacting are going to be triggered. She can see that as enhancing herself or threatening herself. So she can conceive, she triggers off the tendency, the train of thought thinking a threatening man is coming across the street.
A threatening man is coming across the street, she comes in contact with a threatening man coming across the street. This develops the desire, that is the desire to be separated from the threatening man coming across the street. From desire, craving arises, that is to actually engage in being separated from that threatening man coming across the street. From craving, becoming, or existence, there’s activation of a type of rebirth, another way of conceiving oneself, that is being a threatened woman. She now conceives of herself as a threatened woman perhaps as a potential rape victim.
So now that she’s now conceived, she’s taken on this role. Having taken on this role, she’s going to take on all the various associative qualities of that role, and strongly fear. In response to that fear, she crosses over to the other side of the street. This entire process took place in all these various reactive patterns, this conceiving of the object, conceiving of the oneself, being reborn from moment to moment, completely out of her control, completely under the influence of various afflictive emotions, desire, craving, basically ignorance at the beginning, but also through the actions of karma, tendency, habitual patterns, compulsive reoccurring patterns. There was no freedom at all in this reactive pattern.
She experienced real suffering at the moment of fear. There’s no question about that. She had no choice to but to experience fear. So the point, as I said, is that we’re being driven by a chain of sequences from moment to moment. We’re setting up reactive patterns which, again, you trigger tendencies with our mind.
Having triggered those, we conceive of objects in a particular fashion. This again, in turn, triggers out further reactive patterns with our mind, and this is just a chain reaction which is going on by moment by moment in which we are caught up with in our lives. We have no control over this. It’s purely a mechanical pattern of cause and effect. Not only that, but we’re strengthening these afflictive emotions, we’re strengthening desire, we’re strengthening craving, strengthening ignorance, and we’re creating future tendencies to perpetuate the same reactive pattern.
We’re going to go through these same reactive patterns again in the future. It’s not as if they’re playing out and they’re finished. We’re again strengthening the same habitual patterns that are going to be played out again and again and again out of our control with no freedom, no choice involved. This is cyclic existence. It’s beginningless and it could be endless.
It does not have to end unless we choose to end it by becoming aware of the state, of the system that we’re involved in. It’s characterized by three marks: suffering, impermanence, and selflessness, which make it dissatisfactory. If it was dissatisfactory, it may be okay to be caught up in a system, but in fact it’s not. This nature is suffering. It’s dissatisfactory.
Until we begin to recognize that we’re caught up in a system and that the nature of the system is suffering, we will be moved to finally determine to be free of it, the determination to be free, to emerge from the system. So we’ll stop there. So we can consider our problems, our difficulties, dissatisfaction. We want to be happy. Whatever we’ve done in the past, whatever mistakes we made, we can simply regret them and develop the determination not to repeat them again in the future.
And whatever self image we may have, however we may see ourselves, we can change. But for the moment, we have to accept ourselves, become friends with ourselves, forgive ourselves, and wish ourselves happiness, wish ourselves well. May I be happy. May I grow? May I be well?
Think of someone that you like, that you love. Imagine that person before you, and think about how happy this person makes you, how much you care for them. And let the natural positive feelings arrive. Simply radiate them out. To this person, may you be happy.
May you find everything that you want. May all good things come to you.