Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Ven Jampa Gendun opens this 45-minute session with the image of a mother climbing without hesitation into a well to rescue her child — his touchstone for bodhisattva compassion — before turning to Śāntideva’s sixth chapter of the Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life, the foundational text on tolerance and overcoming anger. He frames it as urgent practical instruction rather than scholarship, admitting candidly that he uses his own anger as a guinea pig. Core threads include the Dhammapada teaching that the mind shapes the world, a parable about covering roads with leather to show why changing the mind beats rearranging circumstances, and brief references to Gregory Bateson and Einstein on interdependence and the illusion of a separate self. Candid and grounded, suited to anyone beginning to work seriously with anger.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 01 Tce 1991 02 13.mp3
UUID: 5639a32e-b034-496b-8087-509b4aac415a
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: Tolerance (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 1991-02-13
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 45.7 minutes
Words: ~2,716
So this taking you know, if we were to take what we conceive of as an optimum mode of being, whatever however we might conceive of that, we call that we give it we personify it. We call it Buddha. Happy, loving, healthy, sane human being. Whatever connotations, associations, ramifications that may have for us. You know, we give it some almost a physical presence so we can begin to relate to it in in a very immediate sense.
We begin to define it. What qualities would it have? We call these qualities awakening. We call these qualities wisdom. We call these qualities love and compassion, creative spontaneity, acting skillfully in the world.
The Buddhist paradigm of sanity, which relate with, which we’re seeking to actualize within ourselves, which we all have in a seed form, in a germinal form within ourselves, is an individual who has solved the problem of the human condition. The dilemma that we’re all within. And having achieved that peace by the force of their compassion works skillfully without to help others to experience that. It’s the same. Because this is the optimum mode of being.
And by that is put it in puts prime value in such a way of life, in such a way of being. And so we reoriented ourselves, continue it again and again. But preconception. Love and compassion. It is like a it’s not like a burning love of a mother for her own child.
It it is a sense of will, a sense of taking responsibility. The one image which is used in the Tibetan tradition is that there’s a well, and and a child has fallen down the well. And everybody’s standing around the well. They’re very concerned about the child. But along comes the mother.
And without a second thought about her own welfare, she climbs down the well and rescues the child. So it’s this type of love, fixed thing. It’s constantly from moment to moment, arising, abiding, abiding, ceasing. It’s changing. It will go in whichever direction we need it.
It’s not something thick. Whatever we can see that as a prime value, happiness, worthwhile, it will naturally tend toward that. Whatever we conceive of as detrimental, suffering, It’s it’s constantly moving, constantly changing, and it’s always going to has a tendency to you know, it’s our basic sanity that is going to move in the direction of of what we conceive of as happiness. It’s going to move up, move away from those things we conceive of as suffering. We don’t have to force ourselves to be happy.
So if we present our mind with a real working model which corresponds to reality in the sense that this is my conception of happiness, in fact, lesson. You know, if you if you can see by putting your hand in a in a plane and happiness, you’re going you shouldn’t be surprised if you’re burnt again and again and again as most of us are. So we we try to present ourselves and try to understand it as we understand this model, as we understand what wisdom is, as we understand what love and compassion are, and this energy, we are actually actualizing it. To understand is to become that thing. It’s not like it’s to we’re putting an object under a microscope.
We’re actually trans through the process of transformation. It’s and the understanding and the transformation are not two things. So we’re always trying to draw draw closer to this object of refuge, which is within ourselves. When when we understand the Buddha completely, we ourselves will be a Buddha. When we have taken refuge completely, we no longer need refuge.
It solved our problem. Understanding what our problems are and what the solutions are. We availing ourselves of our basic sanity, of our of our of our intelligence. Of our intelligence. There’s no other there’s no other way than making use of your intelligence.
It’s not to say that by intelligence, I have I don’t mean in the least to suggest that you have to become a scholar. Becoming a Buddha is not earning twenty PhD. It means to awake, completely through the way things actually are, to come in contact with reality, to touch the real world beyond your own fantasy, your own fantasy, to know, and to love, and to act. And that’s our refuge. That becomes our orientation, our direction, our goal, and we continue it for reminding ourselves.
So you have you have your world, your life, the practical necessity that you have to meet, but some part of your life, some part of your day has to be given over to something beyond ego’s dream, the fantasy world of ego. To fill to fulfilling the attachment and desire to expressing hatred, anger, and jealousy, and pride, to living a life based upon hopes and fears. Some part of your life has to seek to transcend neurotic impulsive patterns which constitute most of our waking system. And we have to continue to remind ourselves again and again to keep reorientating ourselves, keep picking ourselves up again and again. We go for refuge to the karma.
The Dharma is the truth. Whatever has the ability to raise the level of our consciousness. Whatever has the the whatever acts the key to help us to get in touch with reality. Whatever happens whatever has the ability to take it from attachment to openness, from hatred to love, from self centeredness to other centeredness, from attachment to openness, from hatred to love, from self centeredness to other centeredness. From a chapter of a book entitled A Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life by Śāntideva, an eighth century scholar yogi yogi Indian master. It’s kind of like the bodhisattva ideal in the Tibetan.
A bodhisattva is one who has developed an awakening heart, the altruistic aspiration to achieve highest awakening for the sake of all sentient beings. There probably is no more nobler, no more lofty idea which has ever been born It’s extremely important text, especially in the tradition. And it’s it covers many different subjects. First chapter, for example, takes up the the means of developing an awakening heart. There are two meditative traditions or techniques.
One is called the sevenfold cause and effect instructions, and the other is exchanging self for others. And this book in the eighth chapter mainly takes up as a matter of fact, it’s the the main source for the meditative tradition of the second tradition of developing the awakening mind of exchanging self for others. The sixth chapter is the chapter we’re going to be looking at. We’re going to discuss discussing, and that is on tolerance. And to a large extent, what we mean by tolerance here is overcoming of anger, which is quite important to us all.
And I thought it’s really practical. It’s something that we need. It’s really getting down to the nitty gritty of what’s happening out on the street. And I wanted to to do it together. I have anger.
And I learn a lot from my. I’m using it as my guinea pig. But but if we can you know, part of the time you know, I have a few maybe a few words. We’re gonna go through the text. There’s a the sixth chapter, I think, what has a hundred and thirty four verses.
So I don’t you know, maybe we we just we can go through and discuss the most most important of these verses. Some of them perhaps aren’t very relevant to any of us, maybe at this particular time in our life, in that particular culture perhaps. Some of them are going to require that we you know, we have to find a key. That’s what I have to do in my position. But you also have to find a way to unlock what is being said to make it relevant to you in particular.
Now there’s nothing inherently beneficial about of Buddhadharma to the west in this century. The main point to remember is that all the Buddhist teachings are the outcome of a warm heart cherished towards sentient beings and not a cold intellect which tries to unveil the secrets of existence by logic. That is to say, Buddhism is a personal experience and not impersonal philosophy. Us to awake. You know, it said that that soon after the Buddha’s enlightenment that he was he was walking along and a man passed what are you?
Are you a celestial being? Are you a god? And then I well, well, then are you some kind of magician? Are you a wizard? Are No.
Are you a man? No. Where are you? I am awake. So the Buddha was simply awake.
Ideas are definitely unstable. And the better the ideal, the more volatile it is. That’s because only the better ideals turn into dogma. And it is this process whereby a fresh, stimulating, humanly helpful idea is changed into a robot dogma. The problem starts in the secondary level, not with the originator or the development of the idea, the developer of the idea, but with the people who are attracted by it, who adopt it, who cling to it until their last nail breaks, and who invariably lack the overview, flexibility, imagination, and most importantly, sense of humor to maintain it in the spirit in which it was intended.
Ideas are made by masters. Dogma dogma by disciples. And the Buddha is always a Buddha.. But the grass is very long in the front yard. Yeah?
And you you just mowed the And for during the course of this talk, maybe so maybe there’ll be a description of of of there’s we’re talking about a difficult, scowling, angry person, really black-faced person. And you think, oh, I wish my mother-in-law were here right now. The second point, so taking it upon yourself, finding trying to see the relevancy of what is being talked about within yourself, not in an academic sense, The second is how to to apply, and that’s actually to apply the teachings. To take the teaching as personal precepts of instruction with everyone, but of all but above all with yourself. How are we going to be patient in dealing with our neighbor’s faults if we are impatient in dealing with our own?
He who is fretted by his own failing. He will not correct them. All profitable correction comes from a calm and peaceful mind. So trying to, skillfully apply what we hear in order to change our mind. We don’t want to change, basically.
We’re gonna talk about that. Necessity is the mother of invention to change. Whatever it is. And we can’t we can’t order the world. We can’t do our liking.
We can’t arrange things in a preconceived manner to fit our want our desire as if that’s the way things should be. If we try, we as we normally do, then we’re going to experience either rage or a sense of emptiness because we because we cannot do the impossible. But, you know, as it turns out, we don’t have to. If we can control one factor, it is as if we control the world, and that is the Dharma tradition. And I I repeat it quite often.
We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts, we make the world. People act with an impure mind, and trouble will follow you as the wheel follows the ox that draws the cart. We are what we think.
All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts, we make the world. Speak or act with a pure mind, and happiness will follow you as your shadow. And as our mind changes, our world will change. In this very place, that we exist will be transformed into a pure land.
And be done about it. What can we do? So all of the all of the king’s ministers have been here to think about what they could do. And one of the clever ones said, I have it. We’ll cover all of the roads in your land with leather.
That way, wherever you go, your your feet will be protected. Great idea. But, of course, the treasurer spoke up. And and said, we don’t have So the forerunner of all change in the world is the is the change within individual’s mind, our beliefs, our ideas, our assumptions. You know, within within and the other, that works inextricably just within the context of the world.
And this is very much like a there was one fairly famous American anthropologist by the name of Gregory Bateson. And he and talking about evolution, he said that the that the various creatures are not the the unit of evolution, but is the the creature and its environment, that the two cannot be separated one out from the other. And I think, you know, Buddhism would would agree very world and just as our our thoughts are in constant flux, likewise, the world, the things about us are in constant flux. And the world follows a definite order, even though we not we may not be able to fathom the scheme of things, still they can be explained. You know, I’m quoting from the Dhammapada. World, in this world,, The second area of our concern is how are we going to relate with the world?
So there’s the world external to me. We have certain assumptions about its nature, and we have certain assumptions about how I’m going to relate with this world. You know, here we may believe, for example, that that our relationship to the world can be characterized by a loving or hating, dominating, submitting, clinging, or non attachment, mutually dependent, adversary. We all have our style. Based the Buddhist position is that, you know, this this second area of concern of our relationship follows logically from the area of our initial concern of the world about us.
That if if the world is in constant flux, then we have to relate to it in a manner of non attachment, non clinging. If the world if the things about us are transitory, you if you attempt to control factors which are out of your control, then the act is not only going to be futile, but if we conceive of the world as independent of ourselves, and if we seek to conquer the world, then we’re going to destroy ourselves. Since the world is in fact inseparable oneself, that we’re mutually dependent. Albert Einstein. A human being is part of a whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space.
He experiences himself, his thoughts, and feelings as something separate from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from the prison by widening our circle of compassion and to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature and its beauty. So this is the the appropriate way of relating with the world is our our assumptions about the nature of the the self. So Buddhism is concerned about the world external to ourselves.
How are we to relate with that external reality? And then the nature of Buddhism is doing the relating nature of ourselves. And we may my house. Through countless lives, I could not find him. How hard it is to tread life after life.
But now I see you, oh builder. I’ll never again show you build my house. I have snapped the rafters, split the ridge pole, and the mind is free from craving, and now my mind is free. So as far as the nature of the self, the nature of the I, who who I am, You know, Buddhism doesn’t ask us to isn’t telling anybody that they should or shouldn’t believe in the existence of an I or a self. The Buddhist position is that when we look at the way we we suffer, when we when we look at the way we think and respond emotionally, it is as if there were a partless, unchanging, independently existing self.