Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Using a ballpoint pen taken apart piece by piece as his central demonstration, Ven Jampa Gendun spends this 44-minute session building a careful, accessible case for emptiness and dependent arising. He opens by distinguishing four levels at which any object can be analyzed — from coarse form through subtle impermanence to emptiness — then clarifies what emptiness actually means by ruling out four common misreadings. The disassembled pen shows that neither individual parts nor the whole collection constitute the pen; only conventional designation by mind brings it into being. A newspaper comic about a self-described “C student” illustrates how ignorance locks us into a fixed, independently existing self-image. The session closes with a guided meditation in which students scan body and mind searching for the solid, concrete I that ignorance insists is there.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 04 WtWNN 1987 08 30.mp3
UUID: 26689007-0bd5-4fed-8ed7-4a33a5ff3087
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: What the world needs now (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 1987-08-30
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 44.1 minutes
Words: ~4,676
But we shouldn’t expect to understand it overnight. Know, if someone said, you must understand Einstein’s theory, general theory of relativity, And they give you a little some rough explanation. And you didn’t you understand a little bit of it, you were frustrated that you didn’t understand at all. This would be unrealistic, wouldn’t you have to study it, reflect upon it, work with it. Dependent arising.
It’s the other side of the coin of emptiness. All things are dependent arising. Stated negatively, we say all things are empty. We can talk about phenomena, just things, tables, people on various levels of the way they exist. We can talk about them on a very coarse level, very rough level.
For example, this table, on the table, the box, this pin. It’s a dependent arising. One level of its existence is a very coarse level. It’s a solid, it’s form, it’s an object of eye consciousness. You know, it’s made out of plastic.
That’s one level we can discuss the way the painting can exist. Its form. A more subtle type of level we can discuss it on is its coarse impermanence. That eventually, you know, this pin is going to break up. It’s going to plastic lasts a long time, doesn’t it?
Eventually, it’s going to deteriorate. It’s course in there. It’s going to I don’t know what it’s going to do. What does plastic do? If I get burnt up in the dump or something like that, maybe run away by a car or something.
It’s going to be destroyed in one way or another. Maybe fifty years, it won’t exist. That’s its coarse impermanence. That’s another level of its existence. There’s a slightly deeper level, subtle level in impermanence.
It’s arising, abiding, disintegrating, movement by movement. Movement by movement, we can’t see this. We can’t understand this. We’re quite sophisticated in the way westerners. We have the we’re quite used to this theory, this atomic theory.
You know, that this is made up even though it looks very solid to us. It’s made up of countless atoms swirling. You know, it’s like we can almost begin to think of a pin as a concentration of energy. You know, it’s just a pattern, an organization of energy. It’s not as solid as it might appear to us at first.
It’s a very sophisticated way of thinking, actually. It’s coming to an idea of subtle impermanency. There’s an even deeper level of the way the pin exists, a level of existence. This is its emptiness emptiness, or dependent arising state of positively. What does that mean?
Let’s examine it for a little bit. The word emptiness. Okay. We can think of the word emptiness in a few different ways. So let’s see.
We can think of the emptiness of in a in a sense of space, this room, of nonobstructability. The definition of space is the absence of obstructability, the absence of obstructability, space. Yeah? And absence, emptiness of obstructability. This is not what we mean when we use the word emptiness.
Alright? That’s one way we don’t That’s one ideal that we don’t need. Another way we can think of emptiness. This room is empty of elephants. Right?
There’s something which could be here, which isn’t here. That’s not what we mean by emptiness. Right? Something which could be here and isn’t here. The room is empty of elephants.
Another possibility. You know, a hundred and fifty years ago, there was a forest here. Right? A hundred and fifty years ago, there was a forest here. Now that forest is gone.
This area is now empty of forest. It was something was here before, and now it’s not here. It’s empty of what was here before. This is not what we mean by the word emptiness. Another way to use the word emptiness.
You know, this The throne is empty of Rinpoche at the moment, but he’s going to come later later in the day. Something isn’t there now, it’s going to come later. It’s an absence of something which is going to come later. This is not what we mean by absence. That which things are empty of has never existed at any time, at any place, in any way, in any form.
But we think it did, we think it does. So we have to begin to understand what things are empty of has never existed at any time, at any place, never in the past, never in the future, and not now. And what is it that things are empty of? Begin. Begin.
Is this can is this empty can empty begin? Yes? No? Did it have a beginning or is it always existed? What happens before the well, before the invented plastic, did this pin exist?
No. So the pin had a beginning. But this pin is empty. But it’s not empty of not having a beginning. So that’s not this is not what we mean.
Anybody else wanna give it try? Empty yourself. Empty yourself. Are you empty yourself? Are you empty yourself?
No. Aren’t empty. The pen doesn’t have a self that’s in you. The pen doesn’t have a self. But don’t you think this pen has a self?
A self of a pen? A self doesn’t have to be when we we use the term self in two different ways. When we refer to phenomena, when we refer to persons. And then we actually on a course level, talk about them differently, but more subtly way, means the same thing. Something which when we say the self of the pen, something which substantially exists from its own side objectively independently.
The self of the pen. We can talk about a self of the pen. But usually when we talk about the word self, we mean a personality, don’t we? Some sort of personality. So what are things empty of?
Okay. Use this pen. Some of you have seen this before. The famous pen trick. Nothing up my sleeve.
No sleeves. You know, we look at this pin. Now, you know, first off, it’s set a little foundation. The fact is we we must come to understand some what we mean by the word ignorance. What do we mean by ignorance?
Ignorance is an emotion. It’s a reoccurring habitual pattern within our mind, has a certain function. Its function is to obscure reality, obscure the actual nature of the way things exist. In what way does it obscure it? I doubt it.
You can listen to the tape. Ignorance is an emotion. It is a is a reoccurring habitual pattern of the mind. It has a function obscuring the actual nature of an object or reality. So that’s what this is what we want to understand.
What is it obscuring and how does it obscure it? How is ignorance operating? This is all tied up together. Ignorance, how ignorance is operating, emptiness dependent arise. So we’re trying to understand what things are empty of.
And things are empty of of a certain way of existing. What what is that way of existing that things are empty of? It is the way they’re being held by ignorance. Ignorance takes this pin. Now again, ignorance is an illogical, irrational, mistaken consciousness.
It is not logical, it is irrational. Okay? Ignorance holds that this pen exists objectively from its own side, independent of causes and conditions, independent of basis of designation or parts, and we’ll we’ll talk about that, Independent of being imputed, organized, projected, designated by consciousness. It’s out there solidly on its own side, solid. You know, it’s always it’s not thinking it, not rational.
This is the way it’s holding. This is the way it’s operating. It’s as if that pin has always existed out there from beginning of time. This is the feeling tone that ignorance is bringing to every object that it that you that we perceive at all times. So it has a feeling, emotional quality about it.
That this pin exists objectively, solidly, self sufficiently, inherently, truly, from its own side independently. Not not dependent upon cause and effect, not dependent upon parts, basis, ifness, designation upon imputing consciousness. All these things. We have to many many things. Right?
We have to understand all these various ways that ignorance is operating. It’s a very vast subject. But let’s check out. You know, we have this feeling about this pen, the way it exists. It doesn’t depend upon my mind.
This pen doesn’t depend upon my mind. This is the way we feel. When we see a beautiful woman, that woman beauty is out there in her flesh. I’ll just I use examples that we can relate to. It’s out it’s in there.
Right? It’s coming from the side of the woman or the man. Right? You want to bring that into you, don’t you? The pleasure, that beauty into you.
Attachment, desire arises. We begin to understand that maybe that beauty that we see out there isn’t quite out there, but maybe it’s dependent upon our own mind. And we have a tool to work with attachment, desire, don’t we? We take this pen. I need a studio volunteer.
Okay. Have you seen me before? No. Yes. You’ve seen me.
Just be honest. Okay. So we have this feeling about this pen that it exists objectively without depending upon my own mind. Yeah? I think so.
This is the way we we could we could rationally say, no, I don’t feel that. I don’t think that way. This is the way we feel. We’re not talking about the way we think, but the way we actually feel our emotional life. Being, as I said, is an irrational mistaken emotion.
It’s not a thought consciousness. We have this feeling about this pen. Okay. We’ll we’ll look at it. We’re going to analyze.
Is this the pen? Thought. Is that a pen? At least. Yes.
It’s goodness. Is that a pen? Is that a pin? Alright. I don’t want take my pin apart.
Is that tip? Is that a pin? A tip? No. Is that barrel?
Plastic barrel there? A plastic? It says, app. Is it a pen? It’s not.
Okay. Is the ink inside that barrel? Nothing left over. Alright? Nothing left over.
Nothing up my space. So the the pin is not any of of the parts. Right? We examine all the parts. None of the parts are the pin.
There’s nothing there’s no pin other than the parts. There’s no pin left over after we examine the parts. There’s nothing left is there a pin left over? No. No.
So we had a very objectively existing pen. Very Is this a pen? No. Is that a pen? It was a pen.
So none of the parts, the individual parts of the pen, there’s nothing other than the parts which are the pen, and the mere collection of the parts is not the pen. There’s there’s a collection of the parts of the pen. Is that a pen? Yes. Right?
So the individual parts of the pin are not the pin. There’s nothing other than the parts which are the pin. And the mere collection of the parts is not the pin. Let’s put it back together. Once did this and I couldn’t get the pin back together.
A complicated pin. And as if as if by magic, voila, we have a pin. Now what does that tell us? It tells us something. It gives us a little bit of information.
Yeah? It’s dependent upon its parts. Right. So when He said that how it’s put together. So we have we’re supplying a little bit of information that the pin that the pin is dependent That the pin is dependent upon its parts, it’s dependent upon how it’s put together.
Alright? So this is telling us more and more about the weight of the actual nature, the way it exists of the pin. Before we had a very solid pin, which didn’t depend upon which existed objectively, which didn’t depend upon our mind, we had a feeling, which didn’t depend upon anything actually. And now, we put the we put these parts together in a in a in a unique configuration as you said, a certain design. And what happens?
We label it a pin. A pin appears to our mind. So the so the pin doesn’t exist completely from its own side, does it? It’s dependent upon our mind, isn’t it? The mind organizes the parts and upon dependent upon this part, it designates, imputes, projects, pins.
Right? Yeah? But this is not a pen, is it? It’s not a pen. It’s not a question about for, you know, rather call it something if you want to say.
Is a pen a name? No. On the ears, pen is a name. Is it? Can you write with a name?
It’s a name. Is the pen a name? Isn’t a pen a writing instrument? No. The name is just the name name of it.
Pardon? The name is just the name of it. Just the name is in your mind. The opinion isn’t in your mind, is it? No.
It’s just external to your mind. You have a comment? So that’s that’s that’s quite right. What does that tell us? Let’s give us some more information.
What does that say? Let’s let’s take an example. You know, if you went I don’t know what an aardvark is. I have no idea. I I know there’s an animal called aardvark.
Now if someone asked me to go out and find his aardvark form, I’d have to say, well, know, could you describe it? What does it look like? What what are its marks? What are its characteristics? Right?
So he would say, it’s this such and such and such and such. And then then when I looked and I I could see where there’s an animal with such and such characteristics, then there’s an aardvark. I better go get it. It’s his aardvark. Likewise, if you were going to ask someone, you know, we we we did analysis, we searched for a particular object.
Can you find Let’s say, what is it necessary? You talked about the form and the function. What is it necessary to, example, find your hand? Can you find your hand? If What would it What characteristics is it necessary to say that we have a hand?
What does it what does it require to say this is a hand? What does a hand look like? Does it have to we have to have five fingers, a palm, back? No? What?
How many do we have to have? Fingers. You have a fingerless hand. A fingerless hand. Alright.
Okay. So we can have a fingerless hand. But a Yuchi. Is that a fingerless That requires hand. Yuchi?
Hand. Yeah. That’s that’s what we’re trying to determine. What do we call a hand? It’s not we’re talking about an idea of a hand.
What what is our idea of a hand? You might say a cat with four hands. But do we say that? Anybody? Function?
You were talking about function. Well, hand is something that that grasps something that has to have fingers that will hold and a leper, a leper is an extension, something that we use to hold on to something. So a leper doesn’t have any hands. A leper who has no fingers doesn’t have any hands. Not completely typical concept.
No? But he he still has hands. He has mutilated hands, but he has hands. Yeah? And a paralyzed person, does he completely paralyzed.
He doesn’t have a hand. No. He has hand. But he has a paralyzed hand. Everybody still has a hand.
So how do we determine what is a hand? Hand. Hand is a so Pardon? So extension of the wrist. So someone who wears a hook, you know, had his hand amputated.
Is is that a hand? An actual extension of the hands. But now we have But we can never do that. We will never come up with a description. Why?
It’s just something we’ve agreed upon. It’s called conventional truth, an agreement. We know what a hand is, but when you begin to analyze it, you’re never going to find what you actually mean by that. But we we feel that we do know that this hand exists very solidly existing from its own side of that things have objective quality, objective characteristics. But everything is merely imputed by conception.
It was starting to get away. We have to come back to dependent arising. So before at the moment of your birth, for example, my name is my ordination name is Jampa. Jampa. Before I took ordination, before my abbot gave me that name, Jampa didn’t exist.
Jampa simply did not exist. At the moment he said, now your name is Jampa. He designated me as Jampa. Jampa came into existence. It is a dependent arising.
So let’s let’s try to tie up this, make it somehow meaningful, somehow useful. We have a feeling, due to the function of ignorance, of an independently existing self, independently existing self, independent, independent, independent. A self which is not dependent upon body and mind, is not dependent upon your culture, your situation, your environment, causes. It’s a convention. I found this in a newspaper a couple months ago.
It’s there’s two it’s called High and Lois. Yeah. It’s there’s two boys, they’re walking home from school. And one boy, he’s holding his report card, think. And he says to the other, that new teacher really did a number on me.
I thought I’d get a b on that test. He gave me a c. And then he says, how did he know I was a c student? So what is what is he thinking then? He has this feeling of being a c student.
He has an identity, an image of himself as a c student. He thought no matter what he does, no matter how well he may perform on tests, no matter how much others may praise his intelligence, no matter how how high he may achieve, somehow these there’s some falsity to all about these things. He shouldn’t have done that well in that examination. It was a fluke. You know, it’s not how he really is.
He’s oh, I’m an overachiever. I’m not really a b student. I’m really a c student. I just just the situation arose that other students didn’t do so well. They were all sick that day.
I happen to give you do a little bit better than the rest, but really, I’m a c student. He’s holding on to a very fixed image independent of everything that happens to him in his life. He was born a c student. He’s a c student now. He’s going to get a c he’s gonna get a grade c job, marry a grade c wife, and raise grade c children.
This is this holding on to an independently existing self, independently. This is the function of ignorance. But actually all things are dependent arisings. Nothing exists independently. We have a self which exists independently.
There is no self which exists independently. There is no fixed abiding permanent self with characteristics inherent to it. Once we begin to understand the nature of the self that is dependent, you know, I have a specific body and specific mind at this moment. Upon this body and mind I impute just as we did to this pin, the parts of the pin we designated pin to the body and mind, I designate self Jampa. Jampa with certain feelings, certain emotions, certain thoughts.
Jampa with certain physical characteristics, certain body wearing, you know, this particular body, this particular mind, I impute jampa. He is a dependent arising. This pin is a dependent arising. There is no independent self whatsoever. Now ignorance holds that there is an in dependence upon us.
We hold to a very fixed image, fixed self. And holding to an independent existing objects, pleasurable objects, painful objects, that there’s inherent quality in there which is independent of our mind, we push things away or pull them towards us, and we engage in attachment and hatred. It’s the view, the understanding of dependent arising which can cut through all this, which can destroy ignorance. This conception that things exist independently, where in fact they exist dependently, dependent upon our own minds, dependent upon causes and conditions, situations, environments, memory, conditioning. So that’s a little bit about dependent arising.
Any questions? Just a few questions. A little bit. Recap. Any ideas in your mind?
No. Independent. Do you think everything everything that you think exists as it exists? If you think you’re Napoleon, are you Napoleon? No.
No. Don’t worry about it. You’re not Napoleon. Then what are we talking about? We’re talking about, you we say you’re mistaken.
That’s not George. That’s Jampa. How do we know that it’s mistaken? If you call me George, you see me coming and you say, here comes George. And he says, no, that’s not George.
That’s Jampa. How do we know? How do we determine whether who’s right, who’s wrong? That’s people agree on the label. It’s a convention.
Just convention again. What is a hand? This is convention. We know what a hand is. If you call this foot a hand, you’re being stupid.
If we look for the object, they don’t exist. We make certain agreements, certain conventionalities. Within these conventionalities, all the objects function. Everything works. But they don’t exist absolutely, ultimately.
Just conventionally. Arising. Things aren’t they’re mutually compatible. They’re mutually complementary. Because things are empty, they’re dependent arising.
Because things are dependent arising, they’re empty. They’re empty of what? Independent existence. Because they’re empty of independent existence. So dependent arising establishes existence.
Emptiness refutes inherent or independent existence. So in order to come to a correct view, we must find a middle way. And in order to do this, we must understand both emptiness and dependent arising and see how they’re the two sides of the same coin. If we if we by emptiness, if we think that because things are empty of independent existence, therefore they don’t exist, then we fall to the extreme of nihilism. The extreme the extreme where we think things don’t exist, nothing exists.
Mhmm. If we think if we don’t have the view of emptiness and we we are constantly we fall to the we in thinking about dependent arising, we do what is called reify or make things concrete that things exist, but we add something which is not actually there, a way of existing which the others don’t possess, then we fall to the extreme of eternalism, permanency. So we have to find a middle way between the extreme of nihilism and eternalism. We do this by understanding that dependent arising establishes existence, things exist, and we but we refute a type of existence of inherent existence, true existence, independent existence. They don’t quite exist the way ignorance is conceiving them to exist, but they in fact exist.
And therefore we find a middle way. This is the correct view. Independent all the various emotions, all the afflictive emotions arise in dependence upon ignorance. Ignorance is the root. In dependence upon, you can think of it from the point of view of subject, the point of view of object.
In dependence upon conceiving of a truly existing I, independently existing eye with a very fixed image, fixed identity, fixed characteristics, anything which promotes this image that we have of ourselves, we’re we’re going to become attached to, we’re going to desire. Anything which detracts from this fixed image of ourselves, we’re going to try to avoid it, we’re going to hate it, having aversion. You know, someone who has gone beyond ego, this even someone who has destroyed ignorance, completely fluid, completely open, completely spontaneous in all his actions, there’s no fixed patterns to the way he’s acting. He’s not operating on a on a basis of a fixed ego image of himself. He knows there’s a self, but it’s merely a dependent arising.
It’s dependent upon the situation we’re in, Our environment, who we’re talking to, and what’s happening now, in other words. Completely in that moment. There’s no fixed patterns to his ways he operates his behavior, his mind. From the point of your object, we have a feeling due to memory, you know, we experience the pleasure in connection with the object before. Ignorance operates in such a way that we can see that that pleasure exists from the side of the object itself.
That object, a similar object appears to us, we think it’s the same object. We hold on as if it’s the same object. This is the object I had pleasure with before. That pleasure is truly from the side of that object. Completely, nothing from my mind.
I must have that object. I must get it in order to get that pleasure. I want to re experience that pleasure. This is all based on ignorance. Yeah.
So we have to go over and over and and over and hear more and more and more and more. Read about it. Think about it. What did what did she say? What do you think she said? I think we’ll meditate.
We’ll meditate on the nature of the self. We’ll try to analyze, try to figure out who we are. Take a comfortable, stable posture. Let’s begin with a few minutes of just mindfulness and breathing. It’s difficult when you’re sitting quietly to try to analyze for the I, the self, as as conceived of by ignorance.
At this moment, ignorance is quiescent, it’s calm. But try in your own mind to generate some emotional quality. This is when the I, ignorance, begins to operate very strongly. For example, thinking, can’t stand you. Try to generate a memory where you had such a feeling, where I’m the most beautiful thing that ever happened to Adelaide.
Pride, sincere feeling. I’m wonderful. I can’t stand you. So try to work with your mind to generate some emotion quality where there’s a feeling a strong feeling of I. Work with that for a few minutes.
Generate this feeling. Remember some jealous moment, some hatred, pride, desire. Where the I became very strong. Now where is that I? That I which feels so strong, very solid concrete I.
It’s as if we could point to it. Where let’s try to point to it. Begin at the top of your head. Is your hair there? Is your hair this I?
Just go down. Is your eye, the I, your ear, your head, your tongue? Just work slowly down through your body. Try to find this eye which seems so solid, so concrete, so real. Just work down through all the various parts of your body, down to the tip of your toes, looking, searching for this I.
Now look at your mind. We’re going to look for the I. This eye, we feel, exists concretely, very solidly. We’re going to try to see if it we’re going to search for it within the mind itself. All the various thoughts that arise in your mind, are they the I?
The various feelings that are coming that you experience, are they the I? The sounds, the consciousness that hears the sounds, is that the I? Can you find anything? All these mental events which are taking place, are any of them the I? Is this what we mean when we say I?
Is it the I that we were experiencing before, this very solid concrete I? The thinking, hearing, feeling. Are any of these the I? Search, look around, watch what happens and think is that the I? Is that it?