Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. A guided loving-kindness meditation — expanding from self through friends, strangers, a difficult person, and finally all beings — opens this 46-minute talk by Ven Jampa Gendun. He then argues that mindfulness of breathing is genuinely radical in a culture of ambition and speed: most people cannot simply do nothing, and this incapacity is exactly what sitting meditation addresses. Quoting Krishnamurti on inner emptiness, Gendun asks whether any external object — a partner, a promotion, a car — has ever ended real dissatisfaction. He reframes the Three Jewels in plain psychological terms: Buddha as the clarity already within one’s own mind, Dharma as honest confrontation with one’s fears, Sangha as anyone walking a genuine inner path. The session closes by introducing dependent arising as the concept that makes change possible at all. Accessible to newcomers.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 03 WtWNN 1987 08 30.mp3
UUID: 9aa2b830-1557-4260-9bbe-660260687b19
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: What the world needs now (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 1987-08-30
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 46.3 minutes
Words: ~4,426
Finished. And they put the sheet over your face. Your life is over. It’s over. You take your body out, and they go through the process of a funeral.
Put it in a box, put it in the earth, covered over, and it’s as if you never existed at all. Death is certain. We don’t know when we’re going to die. And the only thing which can benefit us at the moment of our death is the development of our own mind. That’s all we can take with it.
Nothing nothing whatsoever else. Look at yourself. Look at your problems, some of your sufferings. Accept yourself for what you are now, as the beginning of the process of change. But you have to begin where you’re at now.
Be friends with yourself and wish yourself well. May I be happy? May I be happy? Imagine someone who you like, a care for, same age, same sex, and wish this person well. May you feel deep positive feelings.
May you be happy. May you grow. May you be well. Imagine a stranger, someone whom you feel indifference, no feelings. This person wants happiness just like you, doesn’t want to suffer just like you, no difference whatsoever.
Just like you. Wish them happiness just like you wish yourself. Wish them positive feeling. Someone who disturbs your mind, someone you have problems with. This person is just trying to find some happiness.
This person is suffering. Just for a moment, forgive them. Just set aside this hard feeling in your heart and see a suffering being there who wants only happiness, doesn’t want to suffer, and wish them well. Let go of this hurt just for a moment. Now imagine all four of you together, Each one’s happiness just like the other, and each one doesn’t want to suffer just like the other.
And just radiate out positive feelings. May we be happy. May we be happy equally. And all the people in this room, the people who have come here who are trying, who are seeking a new way, trying to solve their problems, trying to find the happiness that they want. Wish them happiness.
May you be happy. May you grow. And all the people on the block, they’re doing all the various activities, saying, talking, eating, walking, driving, They’re all doing it to find happiness. They’re all doing it through the same mental suffering. Just like us.
Wish them happiness. Wish them that they might find the happiness that they’re looking for. And all the people in Adelaide, all the thousands and thousands of people in Adelaide, busy about their happiness, busy about eliminating their suffering, wish them happiness. Expand your heart. Radiate out the positive feelings to all of South Australia.
And all of Australia. And all the people in the world, all the races, colors, shapes, sizes, and wish them to be happy. And finally, without any boundary, without any center, just the state. May all things be happy. May all things be happy.
I think we’ll dedicate the merit that we created by meditating. By this virtue, may I quickly realize Guru Buddhahood and transfer each and every sentient being into that enlightened state. May the precious bodhicitta where it has not yet arisen, may it arise. May that which has arisen not decline, but develop more and more.
It is workable. Wherever you go, whatever you do. But I would like to plant one basic seed in your mind. I feel that it is absolutely important to make the practice of meditation your source of strength, your source of basic intelligence. Please think about that.
You could sit down and do nothing. Just sit and do nothing. Stop stop acting, stop speeding, sit and do nothing. You should take great pride in the fact that you have learned a very valuable message. You can actually survive beautifully by doing nothing.
Most of us can’t do nothing. It’s an art, it’s something we have to learn or more correctly, we have to begin to unlearn the basic patterns of our neurotic mind. Competitiveness, ambition that we bring to everything that we do. We always have to be getting somewhere doing something. We can never have time just to be just to be who we are, just for a moment.
We always have to be becoming someone else. We don’t particularly like who we are at this moment. So all the speed, all the activities are to avoid accepting ourselves and just being who we are at that moment. So the attitude that we have to bring to our meditation is extremely simple minded one. We aren’t meditating in order to collect pleasures to avoid pain.
Otherwise, it’s simply the same repetitive pattern that we’ve been working with unsatisfactorily with up to now. This dualistic struggle to avoid pain, to gain pleasure, that we’ve been constantly caught up with up to this moment. By simply accepting whatever comes along with equanimity, we can cease the struggle and begin to find some peace. Just with equanimity, without indulgence, without resistance, accept what arises in your mind, the various feelings, emotions, watch them and then in this case, simply return to the mindfulness of breathing. Very simple approach to sanity.
We drop the struggle against the good guys against the bad guys, you know, the white, the guys in white against the guys in black, and drop ambition and competitiveness. We begin to get in touch with who we really are. Most of our values, most of our truths, most of our beliefs aren’t our own. We’re simply repeating things that we’ve heard other people say, that we’ve read, that we think it’s worthwhile to believe, that it’s in vogue to believe, that others will be impressed if we believe, if we say we have no values that we’ve created for ourselves, we have no truth that we’ve discovered for ourselves. This is a reactive mind.
Someone pushes a button and we react. It’s not a creative mind. It’s not a mind which is searching, trying to discover its own direction. What is important for me? What is it that I actually feel?
What is my truth? Unless we begin to develop some equanimity, we’re never going to find out who we actually are and what actually is important to ourselves aside from all our external conditioning. What is my truth, my particular unique truth, my unique values? In this creative mind, we begin to discover our uniqueness, and we begin to appreciate ourselves. The greatest fight that we have to fight in this world which is making us trying to make us someone else day and night is to be just ourselves.
The world is trying to make you everybody else. And so you have to struggle to find out who it is that you really are, what it is that you really believe, in your own values, in your own truths, and begin to stand up for what you think, what you feel is right. So this simple process of a breathing meditation, mindfulness of breathing, begins to ground us in the here and now, who we really are. We go past our fantasies. We don’t dwell in memories.
We don’t get sidetracked in any exotic practices. No hopes, no dreams. We aren’t concerned how we would like to be or how we think she things should be, but how things are at that very moment. It’s a very boring practice. There’s no entertainment.
There’s nowhere for the ego to perch on you. No fantastic side sounds. It’s very boring. We just watch the breath in and out, in and out. It seems like a mountain stream, You know, where I lived in in India was in the mountains.
And you would I it was very beautiful, and I would go for walks. Up into the mountains completely by myself and just listen to a small stream flowing. And you listen to a small stream flow and the gurgling of the water as it moves over the rocks. And you listen, it doesn’t change. And you listen, it doesn’t change.
And you listen, you begin to appreciate the patience the rocks, the sound, the water moving over the rocks. It just flows with infinite patience. And just listen and watch. It’s very restoring, very refreshing. It’s like, you know, returning to an old friend, a good friend, someone who has no expectations of you, no hopes for you, doesn’t want anything from you.
Be such a good friend that you can be yourself with that person. You can return to that person and just sit quietly and be yourself. Just rest and find companionship. If you keep this practice up, returning again to the simple practice of the breath, this constant flow, we find a refuge within ourselves, within the inner being. The storm on the surface of the ocean with the waves being tossed about, which are our usual life, our conflicting emotions, never knowing quite what to do, being caught up in attraction and aversion.
If we can just go beneath the surface of the waves for a moment each part of our day where there’s no movement, where there’s silence and peace, we can find a real source of refuge. A very simple minded way to heal the wounds of our own mind, to heal the conflicts, the split in our external and internal worlds. Sitting quietly with an old friend who doesn’t want anything from you, no expectations, a place where you can find some rest and peace. So the first aim in beginning to destroy ego’s games, the first point is the strict discipline in sitting meditation. You know, we don’t there’s no intellectual speculation, no philosophizing, there’s no gaining, no wonderful experience, no entertainment.
We just sit very gently, but we do sit. And your mind is going to say, I’m a little bit sick today. I think I’ll skip meditation. You say, No, we just sit. The mind says, I’m too busy, we just sit.
The mind says, I have something better to do. You just sit. You just sit. You just sit. You just sit.
And you begin to cut through all the garbage, the ego, all the tricks, all the games, and becomes less and less solid, more transparent, has less control over your life. These neurotic patterns begin to diminish in their power, their influence over our mind. So we use a very simple tool that we can begin to use, the very fact of disciplining ourselves. A wholesome discipline. We aren’t trying to be hard on ourselves.
If we’re hard on ourselves, it’s just another trick of the ego, isn’t it? It’s trying to ego is trying to incorporate your practice into reinforcing its own existence, reestablishing itself. So we’re very ordinary people in a way, aren’t we? Trying to do something which is extremely simple, and we do it over and over again. And perhaps for the first time in our lives, we actually know what we’re doing.
And we’re doing something thoroughly, completely with our whole body and mind. We’re sitting there watching our breath. Maybe we’ve never known what we’re doing before. We’re grounded in the here and now. No future, no past, no expectations, no wants, no desires, no memories.
Just here now with the breathing. This process will begin to carry itself over even when you rise up from your meditation seat. You begin to make a cup of coffee or a cup of tea. You know what you’re doing. You learn how to make a proper cup of tea.
You begin to learn how to talk to someone, being there with that person, communicating. So we begin to deal with things very simply, very directly. Very simply, very directly. It’s a very simple practice. So let’s try it.
Just try to sit in a comfortable position, stable. With your back straight. Don’t indulge your thinking. The moment you realize that you have wandered away from the object, which in this case is our breath, Bring your mind back. Just like the puppy dog, bring it back.
Again and again. Maybe you can only stay on your breath for three seconds. That’s okay. It doesn’t matter. Again.
Maybe in a week’s time you can stay on five seconds. It doesn’t matter. Again, maybe you fall back to two seconds, doesn’t matter. Again, when you find that you are fantasizing, maybe you’re fantasizing on sex, your girlfriend, what’s going to happen next week, memories, Don’t wait to see how the story comes out. You know, don’t wait to find out what happens at the end.
It may be an interesting story, maybe you’re about to make some great breakthrough, some great discovery. But if you indulge, you’re never going to meditate. At that very moment, bring your mind back. At the very instant that you realize that your mind has gone from the object of meditation, that is in this case the breathing, bring your mind back to the breath. If thoughts arise and you can really note thinking, whatever the content, it doesn’t matter.
Whether it’s a perverted thought, a holy thought, doesn’t matter. Good, bad, doesn’t matter. It’s only a thought. An emotion arises, pain, pleasure, doesn’t matter. Just note feeling, feeling, feeling, and go back to the breath.
You can use this technique of watching the gentle breath. Knowing you can know that you’re breathing in, know that you’re breathing out. You can note it with your mind mentally. In, out. You can count.
In, out, one. In, out, two. Counting mentally, not verbally. In, out, three. Up to five, back down to one.
Up to six, back down to one. Go up to ten. You don’t have to use this technique, it’s merely a technique. Ultimately, we don’t want to use any techniques, but in the beginning, it’s a support, it’s a way we can develop our mind from it. Together.
To the Buddha, the Dharma, and the supreme assembly, I go for refuge until enlightened. By the merit from giving in other perfections, may reach Buddhahood so as to benefit beings. To the Buddha, Dharma, and the Supreme Assembly, I go for refuge until I am enlightened. By the merit from giving and other perfections, May I reach Buddhahood so as to benefit beings.
To the Buddha, the Dharma, and the supreme assembly, I go for refuge until enlightened. By the merit from giving and other perfections, may I reach Buddhahood so as to benefit beings. So the mind goes up and down. We have no refuge from our attachments, from our hatred, from our confusion. We have no control over our mind and thus no control over our suffering.
The best we can do is try to avoid the various objects which we see bring us suffering. Don’t talk about her to me. It hurts. Maybe you just broke up with a girlfriend or I’m not going to that party, he’ll be there. Or everything was okay till I lost my job and then things went wrong.
If I only had enough money. We all have our various histories. You know, maybe your mommy didn’t love you, I don’t know. We all have our unique histories. We all have some reason, perhaps, why we think we’re so screwed up, why we aren’t happy.
Maybe it’s because you lost your job. But all these various problems we have, these temporary problems which are constantly arising and then going away, these aren’t our ultimate problems. These aren’t the problems which we we need to seek a refuge from. We need a refuge from the suffering that we have been continually suffering from from beginningless time without remission, constantly. The dissatisfactoriness, the discontentment.
This is what we really need a refuge for. So we have to begin to question our methods for finding the peace, the happiness that we’re looking for. Did your ex boyfriend, did he solve your problem? Is your wife able to solve the problem of suffering for you? Did your last year’s wardrobe, did that eliminate your dissatisfactory feelings, your discontentments?
Did that last promotion give you the happiness which you thought it would bring? Did the car, what you worked so hard to get? Did it fulfill your hopes, your dreams? Did it end your suffering? Is there anything outside of yourself which is going to end your suffering?
Is there one single object that we can look to that’s going to bring us peace? Not from these various temporary problems which are constantly arising, but the undercurrent, the constant dissatisfaction, discontentment, uneasiness, fears, loneliness, which are constantly there. Perhaps we’re not aware of them, but they’re still there and they’re influencing our actions every moment of our life. So we have to look at the nature of our suffering. Where does it come from?
What is its cause? What is the real source of our problem, of our discontentment? And is the enemy you see over there, is he your real problem? Or is it your attitude toward that enemy? The the man who’s stealing your girlfriend the jealousy?
Is he your problem or is it the jealousy you feel, your attachment? Is that the that the source of your problem? And what do you what do you do when you suffer? Where do you go for refuge? What method do you use to solve your problem?
People with who are practicing a spiritual method, the Dharma if you like, the Buddha Dharma if you like, the Christian Dharma, it doesn’t matter, they have a method. Those who aren’t practicing have no method. They’re completely tossed about by external conditions. They have nothing to work with. They don’t have a handle on the problem.
So we have to seek we have to see what it is we’re seeking refuge in, what it is that we need protection from. Why is it that we keep making the same mistakes over and over and over again? Why do we keep seeking happiness in things which can only bring us pain? Except we’re making some basic mistakes. So we go for refuge.
We go for refuge to the clarity, to the wisdom of our own mind. This is Buddha. There’s no other Buddha than this, if you like. It’s a risky statement to make. We have a little bit of wisdom, a little bit of intelligence and clarity.
This is going to solve our problem. But we have to go for refuge to it. We must use our wisdom. If we have the greatest medicine in the world and we just leave it on the shelf, if we don’t take it, if we don’t use it, it’s as if we didn’t have it. It’s of no benefit whatsoever.
If we use, exercise, develop, go for refuge to our little bit of wisdom, we’re going to have a little bit of more wisdom, a little bit more clarity. And dependence upon a little bit of clarity, a little bit of wisdom, we’re going to develop a little bit more wisdom, a little bit more clarity. It’s going to develop. And our problems are going to become more transparent. And finally, they’re going to begin to dissolve slowly, but they will dissolve.
We have a feeling when we’re confronted with problems. It’s like we’re in a big heavy cloud, completely surrounded, enveloped in a very solid cloud. It’s as if this cloud is never going to go away. You can’t see through it. We think our problems are never going to go away.
We’re lost in this cloud. The confusion, permanently. There’s nowhere. This is the way we think, maybe not consciously. This is the feeling tone that we bring to This is our attitudes that we bring to the situations.
It’s a very limited, confused mind. No refuge, completely lost. It’s paralyzed. Such a mind, the only thing that it can do is hope that somebody else is going to come along and solve the problem. Or maybe the problem will go away by itself.
But the white this white knight in shining armor is going to ride down and sweep you up in his or her arms, and everything’s going to be okay. We look we look in for some sort of eternal breast in the sky. We want to go back to the womb. We want it all to go away. We hope it’s going to all go away.
And in this way, we live and die very much the same way we were born. We’re just bewildered children, not quite sure knowing what we’re doing, what where we want to go, uncertain, and very much lost, waiting, not quite sure what we’re waiting for, hoping not quite sure what we’re hoping for. And even those times when the external situation clear up, you know, just as Rinpoche was mentioning yesterday, the sun is shining. Everything’s okay. I’ve got control, and I’m on top of it all.
And then we have some smugness, you know, some arrogance about ourselves. But even if we look a little bit deeper, even in those moments when we’re so cocksure of ourselves that we’re everything’s under control, this fear. There’s always an underlying fear that it’s all going to slip away, that you can’t hold on to it. You’re afraid, and you have no refuge. Krishnamurti.
Take away the home, the husband, the children, the possessions. What is a man if all these are removed? In himself, he is insufficient, empty, lost. So out of this emptiness of which he is afraid, he depends upon property, upon people, and beliefs. Fear arises out of this inner insufficiency, poverty, and emptiness.
Fear is the awareness of our inner emptiness, loneliness, and poverty, and of not being able to do anything about it. So our question now is, how is one to go beyond this symptom, this emptiness, this loneliness? Not how is one to be self sufficient, not how one is to camouflage the emptiness permanently. So that’s refuge. That’s Dharma refuge.
How is one to go beyond these fears? Yesterday in our discussion group, we talked about fear. It’s underlying current in our lives constantly. Many types of fears, from the most subtle types of fears that have been enveloped by the universe, of going out of existence to more coarser types, to more everyday types. The fear of walking down the street late at night, being raped, of death.
But seeing a situation coming in contact, confronting our fears, confronting our loneliness, our problems becomes the Dharma refuge. Simply seeing how things actually are. If we do not confront our problems, we’re never going to solve them. Not how we would like things to be, how we would we try to convince ourselves how things are, but really how they are. This is the technique of going for refuge to the Dharma, to the methods which are finally going to bring about the end of our problems, end of all our fears coming in contact with who we are, with reality.
So it it implies a great faith, a faith in oneself to explore your own mind, your own being in this way, To acknowledge your fears and go into your loneliness and your problems requires a great deal of faith that you have the answers within yourself. It’s great faith that ultimately you believe in your own goodness, your own basic goodness, your own basic intelligence, your own basic sanity. That confronted with your problems realistically and staying with them, not running away from them, we can solve our problems. You have all the necessity, all the requirements, basic goodness, intelligence, wisdom. If there is ignorance, there must be wisdom.
If there is confusion, there must be clarity. The two sides of the same coin. If there if there is light, there must be darkness. If there is good, there must be bad. So by confronting our confusion, we can take refuge in the fact that there must be clarity within our own mind.
I’ve seen how our ignorance we must we can have faith in the fact that there must be wisdom there too. We try to turn over the coin. Clarity and confusion, try to turn over to the other side of our own basic goodness, of our own clarity, of our own wisdom. And in doing this, in turning over the coin, we take refuge in the Sangha, the spiritual community, the highest assembly. Anyone who has inner understanding, who is on a right path, is Sangha, is a spiritual community leader.
They don’t have to wear skirts, strange clothes, reds. They don’t have to be monks or nuns. No matter what they might look like, no matter what jobs they they may have, if they have some inner wisdom, they’re on a right path, they can help us. They are worthy refuge for us. They can help us.
We can take refuge in them. So developing clear wisdom, we must make use of the clear method. And we put our body, speech, mind into a clear path. Begin to open ourselves up to the help of others, developing ourselves, developing some clarity in our lives. In this way, we can begin to realistically cut through our confusion.
We can find our way. We have a real refuge. Through all the ups and downs of our life, we can keep sight on what is important, what is a real refuge. Then our way becomes clear. Things become a lot easier.
You know what’s important. And then you can reach a point when you begin to forget all about yourself, my path, my happiness, my liberation, and you become a refuge for others. So I was asked to talk about dependent arising. His Holiness the Dalai Lama calls it the slogan of the Buddha. You know, they used to they actually printed some badges called dependent origination.
Dependent origination. In in Sanskrit, it’s pratītyasamutpāda, which literally translated having dependently arisen, having dependent arising. Without dependent arising, there’s no way. We’re stuck. Whoever you are now, if you’re an angry person, you’re always going to be an angry person.
There’s no way out of it. There’s no liberation. There’s no solution to our problems. We have to begin to understand, to study dependent arising. It’s a very vast and profound subject.