Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. A Mother Teresa quote on neighbor-love launches this 36-minute session, as Ven Jampa Gendun argues that sentient beings deserve the same veneration as Buddhas — both are causes of enlightenment. Drawing on Śāntideva, he explains that while Buddhas and beings differ in realization, they are equal in what they produce for a practitioner. A rocket-and-fuel image captures why wisdom and merit must develop together, and a passage from the Precious Garland text anchors the discussion of love, compassion, and awakening. The session’s richest stretch is a candid Q&A on practical tolerance: a student describes a two-stage problem — absorbing hurt without anger feels manageable, even satisfying, but navigating repeated uncooperative behaviour without anger or passivity proves far harder. Gendun frames the resolution as a deeper ego-drop: simply do the task yourself and find genuine ease in it.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 32 Tce 1991 05 15.mp3
UUID: 0355efd9-6364-4356-b2b1-040501544a27
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: Tolerance (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 1991-05-15
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 36.5 minutes
Words: ~3,859
Mother Teresa once commented, It is not enough for us to say, ‘I love God, but I do not love my neighbor. Saint John says, You are a liar if you say you love God and you don’t love your neighbor. How can you love God whom you do not see if you do not love your neighbor whom you see, whom you touch, with whom you live? We we are trying to appreciate sentient beings, that they are just as important to our ultimate welfare as Buddhas. Why do we revere the Buddhas and not sentient beings when they are both the causes of our enlightenment, of our going beyond suffering?
But Śāntideva clarifies this, that the Buddha and sentient beings are alike in that in dependence upon both of them we will attain Buddhahood. Śāntideva says, However, they are not similar in the nobility of their intentions, only in the results they produce. In this way sentient beings are also noble and therefore equal. We can’t say that sentient beings are Buddhists and Buddhas are sentient beings. We can’t call black white and white black.
There is a real difference between sentient beings and Buddhas in terms of realizations, in terms of qualities, compassion, etc. But they are the same in that they both are causes of our enlightenment, of becoming a happy, healthy, loving, sane human being. This is why I say that mental health is a social phenomenon. The Buddha said, you know, talking about both, sentient beings and Buddhas are the causes of our enlightenment. The Buddha said that the Lords of Subduers, that is to say the Buddhas, do not wash away sins with water, nor do they remove the suffering of others with their hands, nor do they transfer their realization to the minds of others, but by their showing of the truth, all are made free.
You know, The premise of Buddhism is that truth, reality, is therapeutic. It is liberating. This is why Buddhism makes such a thorough demand upon our analysis, our penetrating beyond the daydream and fantasy of ego, to go beyond that and get in touch with the way things are. On the other hand, fantasy and illusion are pathological, are enslaving. Of all the Buddhist qualities, it is said that his speech is of paramount importance for us as ordinary people because it is through his and her speech that the teachings are given, that in dependence upon the teachings we can get in touch with the real, and in dependence upon that we can become free.
So the attainment of Buddhahood is dependent upon what is said to be two collections: the collection of creative potential, creative energy or merit, and the collection of wisdom. Now, we have existentially with respect to ourselves there are two aspects. There is the experiential, private self, and there is the public, the social self, the self which exists in relationship to others. Buddhahood is the optimum mode of being. It is an actualization of our complete potential, both experientially and in relationship to others.
Wisdom primarily, and by wisdom primarily the wisdom understanding emptiness, understanding the nature of reality. is generated through the teaching on emptiness. This is the way that we can realize our inner potential. We experience peace. We go beyond all our neurotic compulsive patterns.
We cut through our misconceptions, we cut through our ignorance, and we discern the real. But this wisdom must be conjoined, it must be accompanied by a vast accumulation of creative potential, of energy. Wisdom is like the rocket and creative potential is like a fuel. In order to get to our destination, we have to have both of these components, the rocket and the fuel. There is a quote from the text that we are studying on Tuesday night called Precious Garland.
I am talking about what are the causes for enlightenment, what are the causes to be happy, healthy, essentially. If you and the world wish to attain unsurpassable enlightenment, its foundation is the altruistic aspiration to enlightenment, firm like the king of mountains, Mount Meru, compassion extending to all directions and the exalted wisdom relying not on duality. Essentially, the causes of enlightenment are wisdom and love and compassion, or the awakening heart, the intention to become awake for the benefit of others. Love and compassion on the one hand is like a bird needs two wings to fly. We have to, in our practice, develop method and wisdom.
Method is the development of creative potential through the various practices. Wisdom is essentially the wisdom understanding emptiness. And dependence upon these two wings, then we can fly to the destination of Buddhahood to become a happy, healthy, loving, sane human being. That is to say, we can actualize the potential of both our experiential self by experiencing peace within ourselves and we can actualize the potential of our social self, that is to develop the skillful means whereby to be able to benefit others in helping them to attain the same peace. And this is the optimum mode of being we call Buddhahood.
This is our paradigm of sanity, the goal of Buddhism. You know it’s said that the qualities of enlightenment are limitless. You know, what it might be to be enlightened. And this requires limitless creative potential for its attainment. So the question arises, how can I develop, create, accumulate limitless creative potential, this energy, this merit necessary?
It’s said that the bodhisattva, that is someone who has developed love and compassion, who has awakened their heart, who has this altruistic intention to realize their potential for the sake of others, a bodhisattva develops limitless love toward limitless sentient beings. Out of this and thereby accumulates limitless creative potential in order to achieve limitless enlightenment. If the causes are limitless, then we can achieve limitless results. So the bodhisattva raises his level of motivation such that he is seeking to benefit limitless sentient beings, infinite sentient beings, and develops infinite love. And out of this, the force of love and compassion is the most powerful means to develop greater potential.
Out of this, then he, combined with his wisdom, he achieves limitless enlightenment. You know, as I mentioned, use this phrase quite often that mental health is a social phenomenon to emphasize the fact that we have to concern ourselves with our relationship with others if we are going to be happy, if we are going to be healthy. We must find a healthy way of relating with others. We simply cannot withdraw. We simply cannot, you know, people, you know, we are hurt.
We are isolated from one another and we are threatened by one another and we have fears. And we think that we can withdraw both psychologically and physically and find happiness in that way. But we can’t. No matter how difficult it must be, we must take up the difficult task of finding a healthy way of relating with others, of taking up the legitimate suffering, of being vulnerable, of extending ourselves, of caring in the face of possibility of being hurt if we are ever going to be healthy. And just as we have to learn to love ourselves, we have to learn to love other people.
And it is this loving of others which is the cause for Buddhahood, one of the two primary causes to be a healthy person, for this optimum mode of being. Śāntideva goes on: The greatness of sentient beings is revealed in the veneration shown to those whose minds are filled with love, just as the greatness of the Buddhas is revealed in the goodness that comes from having faith in them. Quoting from elsewhere in the text by Śāntideva where he says, The greatness of sentient beings, if someone is revealed because the being who develops love for them is so venerated, therefore sentient beings must be terribly special because if you develop love for them, then they are highly venerated. And he says elsewhere in the same text, When one develops the mind generation of enlightenment, that is this quality of love and compassion. At that moment, though one is wretched and imprisoned in cyclic existence, one is called child of those gone to bliss, that is to say, a child of the Buddha, and is the object of reverence of the world along with its gods.
If you have no other quality, you’re completely debased, you’re completely a moron, whatever, go on and on. If you have love and compassion, then you’re worthy of veneration. As Śāntideva says, the world along with its gods. Just that one single quality. Therefore, sentient beings must be terribly special.
By loving them, you are so worthy of respect. And then with respect to the second part of it, the quotation from Śāntideva, The greatness of Buddha is revealed in the goodness that comes from having faith in them. There is a text by Nāgārjuna called The Praise of the Supramundane One where it says, Through firm and constant faith in Buddha, Dharma and Sangha, the mind becomes pure and irreversibility is strengthened. And then from the teaching which is common in this verse, The external conditions for evolving Buddha nature are actual Buddhas or spiritual teachers, which are their representatives. The Dharma, the teachings and insights, and the Sangha, the spiritual community of practitioners.
Through meeting with and having firm faith in these three and through practicing in accordance with their instructions, one will progress further and further along the irreversible path toward highest enlightenment. Therefore it is altogether fitting to have faith in their words and to aspire to fulfill them. You know I’ve talked about the various ways of developing faith. There’s reason faith, believing faith, and all the various types of faith. But faith in the Buddhist context has the qualities of one.
It is a sense of seeking to emulate that which you have faith in, that you want to integrate, you want that to become a part of you, that object towards which you have faith. But also, faith is a mind which is extremely firm. One of our problems is that we’re wishy washy. We don’t believe in anything particularly. We never really analyzed anything very deeply particularly.
Someone who speaks with authority, with sweet words well, says A, say yes, A. Someone comes along and speaks better, more eloquently, B, yes B, B. Someone else is going to come along and say C, and nothing is ever gained. Faith represents a mind which has conviction. It cannot be swayed.
It has seen for itself through its own, either through its own reasoning, experience, intuition, that this is the way it is. It knows and therefore it cannot be swayed. And therefore out of this arises direction, out of this arises, this can act as a foundation for further progress. One of our greatest hindrances is doubt. Doubt is quite useful, but there are two types of doubt.
There is healthy doubt, which is a questioning. And then there is afflicted doubt, which never comes to any conclusion, which never seeks a conclusion, is to take the responsibility of coming to a conclusion because one may have to change, one may have to act upon that And without this coming to a conclusion, developing some conviction, that nothing will ever change. We’re going to go through the same habitual patterns, the ways of acting that we’ve worked with up to now. So faith has this idea. Some kind of deeper understanding, real conviction, a real longing.
Maybe I’ll stop there. Buddhism would say that are various types of faith. Buddhism is quite renowned for all its classifications. Everything can be classified many different ways. But one classification of faith is faith based upon no reason, faith based upon wrong reason, and faith based upon correct reason.
And obviously the former two are of not much use. Buddhism is not asking you to believe in anything. It doesn’t even ask you to believe in Buddhism. That’s not the idea. It is to help you to change.
And you’re only able to do that when you become convinced of what it is, that you can change in a way that is open to change. And faith with no reason, dogmatic faith, unreasoned faith has little force. It doesn’t move the mind. Nothing is going to happen. The ruts of the road are too deep.
The wheels are still going to travel in them with unreasonable faith or wrong faith. Wrong faiths will easily be overturned by somebody else, by somebody else, by somebody else. The only faith which we have found, we have real conviction in, which we have seen stands the test of our examination in the light of our wisdom, in the light of our experience and intuition. It’s going to help us to get out of our ruts, these compulsive patterns. Anybody have any questions?
A comment? In other words that do we attempt to come to terms with our response by trying to stay calm and practicing patience? Or do we or do we as well as try to sort of understand why What do you think? I find that I do try to understand when it’s a hassle. And my big problem is that it’s awfully difficult to know the truth, but sometimes it’s not appropriate to talk to the other person so that I I don’t actually get it’s sometimes totally inappropriate to ask them so I don’t get to actually know the truth of what they were really meaning or saying.
Mhmm. And so then I realize that it’s actually my interpretation of what they might have thought or said, and that’s just disastrous. And so in the end, it seems to be better to make no judgment of what we think their intention might have been. Of course, you do, don’t you? But that seems to be disastrous because because time and again, I’ve discovered that I was wrong.
Yeah. So then is it better to not try and work out work it out from their point of view? Do you have to just try and work it out from in terms of your own response of anger or fear or whatever? I don’t think there’s an easy formula for which you said I think you have to develop an array of possible ways of working with the situation. One might require that you see the world through their eyes, how they are seeing the problem, the situation.
Exchange yourself with them and therefore your reaction might be one of compassion rather than hostility. And would that matter if you were framing it? Right. Well that would be one way of working with the situation. I mean the person can be trying to hurt you and completely unjustifiably or whatever.
And that we’ve gone over numerous ways of possibilities of reframing that situation, that this is your karma, that you’ve hurt this person in the past, now simply returning to you. That it’s because of your attachment. We’re not saying that you shouldn’t defend yourself, that you shouldn’t try to solve the situation. All this in the development of tolerance is to develop a way of dealing with the situation such that you don’t become distressed and therefore angry. So the person might hurt you, but you may be willing to, you may have the ability to accept that hurt without becoming distressed and compounding the difficulty.
No one wants to be hurt, but maybe you have to accept that hurt without becoming like, This shouldn’t have happened, or whatever. So all of these possibilities are ways of dealing with this. This person is hurting me and therefore if I can accept that hurt, then I’m a better person. I’m going to it’s going to help me in the long run. And I don’t want to be hurt, but I’m being hurt.
That’s a given. And finding some way to reframe the situation. Anybody have a comment? You can be hurt. You can say, Somebody says, You’re stupid.
You’re really stupid. You say, That hurts me. It hurts you. You acknowledge that. But it doesn’t mean that you have to react.
I mean, you can accept I’m hurt. You even express this, say I’m hurt. But it necessarily have to follow on from that if you become distressed and have to react with anger and aggression toward that person. That doesn’t necessarily have to follow on. Well, glad to ask you.
I mean, it seems to me that sometimes it would be just simpler to do what you said and just think, well, this is hurt like hell, but there’s no way I find that actually experiencing that hurt is fairly easy. I mean, because it does just so obviously hurt that it’s a very good quality. I can really relate to it. You know, somebody’s really either intentionally or not giving me heaps, and I just it’s just like, bang. I get it.
And I can really relate to that. But then there’s a second stage where if I give up completely on being really angry and if I can really appreciate the person that’s just not trying to be either deliberately or whatever, I, you know, I drop the anger. I don’t wanna completely unwilling to accept that I’m being hurt, that I’m being treated like shit or whatever. I don’t know. That’s it’s I just immerse myself into it.
But then I find the second stage much more difficult. If I’m dealing with a very practical situation and that person is repeatedly refusing to just cooperate on something that is quite obvious. Right? Now the question that arises is that how can I make it clear that, well, this is obviously the way, you know, it’s so simple? That’s how it’s meant to be done on a very simple situation.
Then I get a tremendous conflict that am I still being tolerant by not accepting that that person just doesn’t wanna do it? Yeah. I mean, I’ve dropped the anger. I’m not angry. I’m just completely happy with being physically immersed in that and that’s fine and that’s fine.
Know? It’s alright. But then I’ll get to the point where now do I if I tell that person this is the way I mean, you know, things like cooking, it’s like putting things away, you know, really practical things. She or he’s not gonna do it. Now I’m gonna do it for her or for him.
Alright? And and that person knows that well, obviously, that thing has to be put away. Now this is where I get tremendous problem, you know, happening to me. I’m not angry. I’m, you know, in fact, that can go on.
I’d rather have been put in that situation forever where it’s alright. It’s just not gonna work. It’s okay. But then there’s still that little things I would say, well, no. Because, you know, it can be done.
Right? That thing can be put away. It’s that simple without being angry, without being and that and then I get a tremendous problem now. I’m being intolerant because obviously she or he’s not ready for it. And and I find it much harder to to find a solution or a way to deal with that than to just get into the, you know, the the receiving of the hurting.
The receiving of the hurting or the abusing, you know, I just couldn’t I find it. I can actually enjoy it. Yeah. You’re right. I think that’s a really good question because it’s dealing with the practicalities.
I do. I do. I find I mean, that’s why Buddhism has been such a tremendous revelation for me to know. You know, I my first book was, you know, go for it, absorb the abuse, you know. Just dive into it.
And I and that’s why I’ve I’ve done that. I’ve just and it’s not that I’m I’m gonna allow anybody to abuse me, you know, for the fun of it, but I found that part of the problem, that part of the situation easier than the the the decision making process. What, you know, well, this is I’m gonna cut sharp through that without anger. I’m not angry. You know, I’m just you know, I’m not angry at you, but, you know, how about you could just do it?
And that is much more difficult. And I think I find it much much harder to develop the appropriate skills to just get to the point, you know, without the anger. The the anger part is something something that is quite physically easy to relate to. I mean, that’s how I I feel it. You know, it’s it’s and yet, it might become enjoyable.
I I I I sometimes I you know, somebody hurls at me or somebody pushes me or, you know, I would be happy to just to, you know, go for your life. Then when it comes to the the actual point beyond that, then But isn’t that the next step in true relationships with people? What happens if your partner doesn’t wanna wanna put away the issue? This negotiating just trying to enforce your own desire upon the other person to do what you want? Perhaps you should just accept that that’s the way life is.
What happens if you can’t accept that? Think that’s the first stage you’ve to get to. You must accept that life is like this. That some people don’t like to put away dishes. And they don’t want to put away their socks and they don’t want put away them.
I mean, you can go through all the moves of making them understand the benefits of putting their socks away. But ultimately, they don’t wanna do it, you can’t impose your desire upon them to do it. And maybe the most effective way is you just do it. And that’s the end of it. Can relate to that.
I mean I’ve started to really work on that even more and more and more and I think it actually works. I just do it. So that’s Are you happy about doing it? I’m happy and happy. I am.
Yeah, true. Really honestly, I mean, I’m, you know, so that’s it’s the further stage of dropping the ego now because, you know, dropping even more, you know. But I I still find it a bit more difficult than, you know, the anger part. I haven’t always felt the same, but now this is the same time. Danger, though, in in One of the reasons that we dedicate our creative potential is so it’s not destroyed by anger.
May I quickly become an awakened spiritual teacher and lead each and every sentient being to the enlightened realm through these skillful actions. May the supreme jewel of the awakening heart that has not arisen arise and grow, and may that which has arisen never diminish, but increase more and more. Thank you.