Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Opening with Thomas Merton’s claim that genuine love demands “a kind of death of our own being,” Ven Jampa Gendun asks why we trust television ads over the example of the Dalai Lama or Mother Teresa. In this 46-minute session he argues that self-cherishing is the root obstacle to happiness and redefines renunciation not as giving things up but as growing up to accept responsibility for others. He then guides listeners through two Lamrim preliminaries: a reflection on precious human life — comparing the audience to soldiers in active combat and famine victims in Ethiopia — and a vivid deathbed visualization to make impermanence felt. The session closes with a metta practice extending goodwill from self to friend, stranger, and enemy, with the practical instruction to set aside the grudge for just thirty seconds.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 02 WtWNN 1987 08 29.mp3
UUID: a358b3f0-cba4-4af4-a4f1-78e3a3610ac1
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: What the world needs now (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 1987-08-29
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 46.2 minutes
Words: ~4,365
But these are fine words, they? But we don’t believe them, do we? You know, why don’t we take the Buddha, Christ, why don’t we take the Dalai Lama and Mother Teresa as examples of ways to find real happiness, real peace, real meaningfulness in our lives? Why is it we listen to the man on television and believe that if we use bank, State Bank, all our problems are going to be solved. If we buy this car, then we can drive our way to happiness.
If we use this deodorant, all our dreams are going to come true. We’ve got it all figured out. I read a quote by Thomas Merton. Thomas Merton was a trappist American monk. He’s he’s talking about why we don’t believe him.
It is hard to really love others if love is to be taken in the full sense of the word. Love demands a complete inner transformation. For without this, we cannot possibly come to identify ourselves with our brother. We have to become, in some sense, the person we love. And this involves a kind of death of our own being, our own self.
No matter how hard we try, we resist this death. We fight back with anger, with recriminations, with demands, with ultimatums. We seek any convenient excuse to break off and give up the difficult task. So, in a way, we must die if we are ever going to find real peace. If we are ever going to really be able to help others.
But what is it that actually needs to die? It’s our own self-cherishing, isn’t it? Our own selfishness. This is the self that’s causing all our problems. This is the self which prevents us from living sane, spontaneous, loving lives.
So we have to use our intuition, our reasoning, and experience. We have to make continuous effort again and again to try to realize this until we reach the point where we feel to the depths of our being, now it’s time to forget about myself. At some time, either we have to begin to forget all about ourselves, our maze of neuroses that we’ve been playing around in our entire existence, manipulations, or complications, and make a clean jump into helping others. It’s like jumping into, you know, on a hot, sweaty day, like jumping into a clear, cool pool, a brilliant fresh water, brilliant, clean water. It’s all left behind, all the problems, the difficulties, complexities.
Grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console, to be understood as to understand, to be loved as to love. For it is in giving that we receive, it is in pardoning that we are pardoned, and it is in dying that we have eternal life, that we are born to eternal life. Through destroying our own self-cherishing, going beyond our self centeredness, we are born into the family of the Buddhas, to a life of meaning, of beauty, of joy, of noble aims, a life in which we are beginning to fulfill our destiny, a life where we realize the meaning of what it means to be a human being. Again, from Śāntideva. You know, if we aspire, as Lama Zopa mentioned last night, as many people do, of you do, you’re making a statement by coming here.
You’re acknowledging some inner aspiration which is becoming awakened. But we must lay some groundwork, some foundation. Otherwise this aspiration is going to come and go according to our moods, the situations. We need some consistency, some stability to this aspiration. It must be built on solid ground.
These are the preliminary practices upon which we will base ultimately by great compassion and love. If those beings have never before even dreamt of such an attitude for their own sake, how would ever arise for the sake of others? Without passing passing through the stage of wanting to sincerely end our own suffering, we can never develop the sincere desire to end the suffering of others. The determination to eliminate our own suffering, the determination to eliminate suffering, The determination to eliminate suffering. When it’s directed at yourself, we call this renunciation.
When it’s directed to others, it’s called compassion. Same thing. It’s just two different objects. So we begin with ourselves. We make a final determination to end our own suffering once and for all.
And in dependence upon that, we can direct our attention to others and develop real, sincere compassion. When we renounce, what we’re renouncing is the cause of suffering. And many people are willing to go to war and even give up their lives for cause. But these same people cannot give up the cause of suffering. We are afraid to learn.
We are afraid to grow, to accept the added responsibility of what goes along with growth. So in this context of the great vehicle, this context of aspiring to sanity, to develop yourself so that you can be of benefit to others, to help them do the same, to develop compassion. We renounce anything in our experience that is a barrier between ourselves and others. In other words, renunciation is making yourself more available, more gentle, more open to others. Really, in renunciation, it’s not so much that we give up anything as it is that we grow up and accept responsibility for others.
First, have to accept responsibility for ourselves. That’s a necessary preliminary. If you want to solve the world’s problems, have to put your own house in order, your own individual life. That is something of a paradox. People have a genuine desire to go beyond their individual cramped lives to benefit the world.
But if you do not start at home, then you have no hope of helping the world. So the first step in learning how to rule is learning to rule your own household, your immediate world. There is no doubt that if you do so, then the next step will come naturally. If you fail to do so, then your contribution to the world will be further chaos. So we determine to break out of our cocoon, of constantly recreating our neurotic patterns, patterns of behavior, patterns of mind.
Most simply, renunciation is the determination to change. I have to change. You make this determination not when things are only going bad, but through your own experience, through your reasoning, through your intuition, this determination may carry through even when things are going well. You’re having a happy day, but still, you know, you have to be working on yourself, That you have to be creating constantly the causes of growth. That you have to be constantly working toward growth, towards change.
There has to be some consistency. We build up this consistency depending upon the four contemplations, the four preliminary practices. So we’re going to meditate on this. The first is appreciating your chance. Very simple.
It’s so simple that we overlook it. The fact that we’re human beings, that you’re healthy. We got to compare it to what I saw in India, and you would be the upper any of you, even the people in the dole, would be in the upper one percent of the population of India. You have everything you need, a good mind, a good body, all the material needs. You’ve got a chance to do something meaningful with your life.
But we overlook this. So we have to again and again remind ourselves of the opportunity, this chance. If we don’t, this chance is not going to last forever. It’s definite that we’re going to die. So we have to consider death.
Otherwise, we’re not going to be moved to do anything with our lives. Then we consider actions and the results, that is karma. That if I want to bring happiness to myself, I must create the causes of happiness. If I don’t want to suffer, I must begin to eliminate the causes of suffering. And then we begin to investigate the nature of our suffering, the nature of our problems, the nature of our neurotic mind.
So we’re going to sit and meditate on appreciation, beginning to appreciate our chance, this opportunity that we have. So try to sit in a stable, comfortable posture. Now you have to try to, you know, I’m going to say some words. We don’t the words are just supports. They’re just keys, methods, trying to open up, trying to act as a doorway into inner states of mind.
Words have some power if we make correct use of them. But the words are not ultimately what we’re looking for. We’re looking for the actual states of mind which the words can induce. The the words I love you are not love. State of love is beyond words, isn’t it?
We’re trying to induce the state of mind which we appreciate. You know, I got this you know, if I if I say that wow in words, I’ve got this chance to do something. Yeah? So you have to work with your own mind to find the keys that are working for you to open up yourself to these states of mind. We try to cultivate states of mind.
This is meditation. Meditation in Tibetan is gom. Gom simply means to habituate, to familiarize. We induce very skillfully certain positive states of mind and we familiarize, habituate ourselves to those particular states of mind until they become an integral part of our mind. In this case, we’re trying to cultivate a sense, I’ve got this real opportunity.
There’s no reason for me not to realize everything that I can be. Be a sane, happy, healthy human being. There’s no way I no reason why I have to continue in the same miserable and neurotic patterns which I’ve been existing up to now. I’ve got everything I need here, now. Mind, body, material.
So you have to work with your own mind. I’m just going to offer suggestions to show you a possibility. What now let’s think about begin to appreciate our lives, this opportunity, so we can begin to compare ourselves to others as a way of appreciating this chance that we have. Think of yourself as, you know, perhaps as a person in Iran or Iraq right now, maybe a young man or a young woman in Iraq. What would you be doing at this very moment?
You’d probably be killing other people, wouldn’t you? Or trying not to be killed. Or marching down the street with hatred in your heart, screaming, kill, kill. Think about that. Or perhaps you’re were born as a tribe person in Ethiopia, starving.
What can you do? Do you have any chance to really do anything with your mind? To study, to practice, to meditate? When you’re starving, your family is starving, you’re seeing your children dying, what can you do? Put yourself in that person’s position.
What happens if you had been born retarded, that your mind didn’t operate properly? What would it be like to be a retarded person? What can you do? Can you generate love? Can you generate wisdom?
Can you cultivate skillful states of mind? What can you do? Or maybe you’re going through drug therapy. You have to have daily injections of some drug, and it affects your mind. You can’t think properly.
Or maybe you’re blind. Or maybe you’re completely caught up in the material world, working eighteen hours a day to build up your business. Is there any time for love and compassion in such a life? Think of yourself. You you you have an intelligent mind.
You have some love in your heart, some kindness in your heart. Don’t you? You have a healthy body. You have freedom to do what you want, freedom to practice religion, to study. You have all your material needs taken care of.
Now think how few people in the world have such a chance, such an opportunity. Of all the billions of people in the world, how fortunate you are. Of the million people in Adelaide, how many people are thinking about love and compassion this morning? Don’t lose the chance to do something. You have everything you need to change, to become all that you want to be now.
Make use of your life. Now we’re going to dedicate the positive energy, the merit that we created through meditation. It is difficult to understand exactly what positive energy, positive potential, merit is. Don Juan talks about, in the books by Carlos Castaneda,, talks about personal power. If we have personal power, merit.
If we don’t have personal power, if we don’t have merit, then the most beautiful, profound piece of wisdom that exists can be presented to us. And it’s meaningless. It doesn’t mean a damn thing. But if we have personal power, then one word can change the course of our lives, it’s all dependent upon our personal power, our positive energy. So we dedicate this, this energy that we feel.
By this virtue, may I quickly attain the state of Buddhahood and lead each and every sentient being into that enlightened state. May the precious bodhicitta, where it is unborn, arise. May the born have no decline, but develop more and more. And then we’ll continue with the four contemplations, the four reversals as they’re sometimes called. We begin with the appreciating this opportunity, this chance we have to do something with our lives, something meaningful.
That we have everything we need to change. You know, we all dream our dreams. We all build our castles in the sky. But we have to begin to put the foundation beneath those castles. It’s not enough just to wish.
So seeing that we have everything that we need to begin this foundation laying of new way of life, we develop some enthusiasm. But this opportunity isn’t going to last forever. The fact is we’re going to die. There’s no doubt. It’s definite.
The time of death is uncertain though. You know, last Sunday in Sunday school, the children were discussing death. And they were all very much certain that we were going to die. They all agreed, yes, I’m going to die. But when we began to discuss, could I die tomorrow?
Or maybe next year? No, no, no, no, no way. When I’m old, very old, curled over, you know, I can’t walk, then I’ll die. That’s the time people die. And we talked about the fact that maybe a plane could crash into this house right now.
No, no, it’s not going to happen. Doesn’t it happen sometimes? Yes, but it’s not going to happen now. How about going home in car? Yes, it could have, but it’s not going to happen.
I’ll make it home safe and sound. Even children, they cannot accept, they cannot There’s some instinct against some predisposed pattern not to be able to face the uncertainty of the time of death. The fact is, the reality is, that we could die ten minutes from now. The fact that you’re well, that you aren’t sick, is not reasonable say, but not reason enough to say that you couldn’t die tomorrow. And most of the people who die in LA today, ninety nine percent of the people who die in LA today did not expect to die today.
Right? Maybe a few terminal cases in cancer wards. One expects to die. But the reality, the fact of the situation is that we could die at any time. And at the moment of our death, what is it going to be any use?
What is it of any use at the moment of our death? Is anything going to help us? So we have to investigate that. That’s the contemplation of the the three roots of meditation on death. We’ll meditate those.
And after that, we’ll do a short meditation on metta. Metta simply means love. We’ll do a meditation on love. Well, first we’ll take into consideration ourselves, that we have to begin to wish ourselves well. And the fact is, if we don’t have good feelings towards ourselves, positive feelings towards ourselves, we’re never going to develop them for other people.
We have to accept ourselves with a critical intelligence, accept our shortcomings, accept all the things that we don’t like about ourselves, and say this is this is how I am now. But I can go on from here. This is my starting point. We don’t try to hide from ourselves. If we try to hide our problems, suppress our problems, how are we ever going to deal with them?
We have to know our problems and face them realistically. Confront our difficulties, our sufferings, the unskillful habit patterns that keep reoccurring in our mind. We have to begin to recognize them, and then we can deal with them with clarity, with wisdom. Wish ourselves well, may I be happy. You know, why not?
Why not be friends with yourself? Quit torturing yourself and be happy. May I be well, may I grow. You know, these are suggestions, Words. Right?
Words can after we use these words as a mechanical repetition in order to induce the real states that we want to feel. May I grow spiritually, may I be well, may I be happy. Slowly some feeling will be generated, induced by these words. We direct these positive feelings towards ourselves, then we direct it towards someone of the same age, about the same age, same sex, someone we like. We’ve had good feelings towards them naturally.
We imagine them before us. If you can visualize them before us, that’s very well, that’s good. That’s not necessary. Just imagine that they’re before you now, that you’re actually there. May you be happy, radiate out positive warm feelings toward this person.
May you grow. And then we take a neutral person, a stranger, and someone we feel indifferent towards, and then we have no feelings of aversion or attachment. It just doesn’t matter. Their life doesn’t matter. It doesn’t affect us in any way.
And we have to begin to see that this neutral person, this stranger, in fact, wants happiness just like myself. No difference whatsoever. That in fact, this neutral person doesn’t want to suffer just like myself. No difference whatsoever. Exactly the same.
Every person, you know, we have all have our superficial differences. Females, males, different colors of clothing, different occupations, different languages, nationalities, different likes, dislikes. If we go beyond, slightly beyond the exterior into the interior, deeper and deeper into the being, there’s a being there that only wants happiness, doesn’t want to suffer exactly like me, no difference whatsoever. Wish that person happiness. You can’t wish that person happiness, you can’t wish your own self happiness.
Just like yourself, no difference. If you can’t feel positive feelings toward that person, you can’t feel positive feelings towards yourself. Same. It’s just a reflection of how you feel towards yourself. And we take the most difficult, we take it someone who disturbs your mind, who you have problems with, An enemy.
Yeah. It doesn’t have to be a just somebody that drove in front of you on the way to work or something, got some anger toward. Somebody that disturbs your mind. You know, that person is simply trying to practice a method to find happiness just like you. Whatever they’re doing, they’re trying to find happiness.
He may be extremely unskillful in the way he goes about it, But, you know, he’s ignorant. His method may contradict you, come into conflict with your methods for finding happiness. But beneath he is simply doing what he is doing to find happiness. And so for a moment, we have to find a way to set up set aside this grudge, this hard feeling, this hardness in our heart. Just let it open.
Just a moment. You know, we don’t have to we’re not going to radically alter our feelings toward this person. We’re not telling you to love this person, but just for one thirty seconds, set aside this grudge and see that there’s a human being who’s suffering there. Just for thirty seconds. Just temporarily.
Okay? You can take your grudge back after we’re finished. But for thirty seconds, set your grudge aside. There’s a human being who’s suffering there who just wants happiness just like you. May you be happy.
And then we’ll take all four together, unbiased, trying to develop some equality that all these people are exactly the same. I’m exactly just like them. All one happiness don’t want to suffer. May we be happy. May you be happy.
And we’re going to spread this radiate out, this feeling, these positive emotions. In Adelaide, South Australia, Australia, the world. I hope. So let’s begin with a few minutes of the mindfulness of breathing. Just know that you’re breathing in, know that you’re breathing out.
If you want to note it actually mentally, in, breathing out, one. Breathing in, breathing out, two. In, out, one. In, out, two. In, out, three.
In, out. Whichever works best for you. Keep bringing your mind back over and over and over again just like training that little puppy dog, but with gentleness. Be gentle with yourself. We are not trying to be perfect meditators.
So let’s let’s begin. The fact that everyone must die. There’s been no one who did not die. No matter how powerful, how loving, how great, how intelligent, they all had to die. Everyone has died.
Even if you owned a hospital and had your own medical college to take care of your health, you’re still going to die. Even if you’re president of the most powerful country in the world, you’re still going to die. Even if you’re a holy person, you’re still going to die. Even if you’re a tyrant, you’re still going to die. Your lifespan your lifespan is continuously getting shorter and shorter and shorter.
Each day, each moment, even as we sit here, the moment of our death is approaching second by second, moment by moment, we’re coming closer to the point of our death. It’s as if we were traveling on a train trip. We left the station, and now we’re talking in the train, drinking and eating, reading the papers, walking around, enjoying ourselves and moment by moment, while all these actions are going on, the train is coming closer and closer and closer to the destination, and it will eventually arrive. And we’ve got to get off the train. We have some time now.
But how do we spend our time? How much part of your life do you use developing your mind, practicing? In your average day, how many hours do you sleep? How many hours do you work, eat, socialize? How many hours do you waste feeling depressed, frustrated, bored, angry?
How much time goes by and compared to the time you actually wisely make use of your life. But we don’t know when we’re going to die. We could die tomorrow, next year, five years from now, ten years from now, twenty. We don’t know. It’s uncertain.
But we have this feeling we’re going to live a long, long, long, long time. We have this feeling. Is that a reasonable feeling? Is that based in reality, this emotion? Sometime in the big distant future, but not soon.
Not soon. Is that realistic? Babies die before they’re even born. Three year olds, seven year olds, twelve year olds, fourteen year olds, young people, middle age. There’s no age that people don’t die at.
No age whatsoever. There are many causes for death. And though you feel healthy right now at this moment, though you feel safe, Think about the possibilities of a fire, floods, war. Maybe someone right now is pushing a button, and in twenty minutes, we’re all dead. Possible.
Possible. Car crashes, heart attacks, murders. This human body is extremely fragile. And just just even a slight blow to the head, and you’re dead. Just stepping on a a nail, a slight puncture, and you’re dead.
Germs that you can’t even see, you’re dead. It’s a very delicate chemical process that’s going in the body. If these are only slightly interrupted, we’re dead. At the moment of your death, of what use are all your possessions, your enjoyments? Of what use is your money, your clothes, your house, your car, your jewels, your power, your fame.
At the moment of death, what use are all those things which you spend your entire life struggling to get? And even those people who love you, who sincerely wish you well, who want you to be happy, who you love, at the moment of death, can they really be of any help to you? Even though they’re holding on to your body, your mind is beginning to slip away, things are becoming dark, and they’re crying, trying to hold on to you. Can can they really help you in any way? Can they stop your death?
And even your own body, your constant companion from birth, is it of any use at the moment of death? You’ve cared for it, protected it, worried about it, kept it comfortable and healthy, fed it, cleaned it. But at the moment of death, it’s useless. It has to be left behind. Now imagine that you’re dying.
Your actual you’re on your actual deathbed. Maybe you had a heart attack or an accident, but you’re dying. All your possessions are piled up on your bed, your bank book, your video cassette recorder, whatever. They’re all in your room with you. There are doctors and nurses around you poking needles in you.
People are crying, and all the people who love you, They want to someway prevent your death. Friends are holding your hand. People are praying. You’re dying. Your vision begins to dim.
You can’t hear. Begin to panic. Your mind is starting to slip away. Things are growing dark, alone, without friends, without possession, alone.