Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. “Is the observer the eye? Is that what you mean when you say I?” — this opening inquiry into the watcher-self sets the tone for Ven Jampa Gendun’s 40-minute session. He leads a graduated loving-kindness meditation, moving from self-compassion outward through friend, stranger, and enemy to all beings in Adelaide, Australia, and finally the entire world. He then explains two breath-meditation techniques in detail: basic counting and a “following” method that tracks the breath along an imagined channel from nostril to navel, with five counted stops. The doctrinal thread covers taking refuge — citing Nāgārjuna that words are for weak minds without genuine movement of the mind — and three sources of faith: intuition, reason, and lived experience. The session closes with a pointed distinction between wanting a present problem to disappear and genuinely understanding the basic nature of suffering itself.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 05 WtWNN 1987 08 30.mp3
UUID: 8af48e50-9467-4c98-a119-8f9ff9c9e1bf
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: What the world needs now (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 1987-08-30
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 40.1 minutes
Words: ~3,312
Is the observer the eye? The watcher, the searcher, is that the eye? Is that what you mean when you say I? This observer, this watcher? Is that what the I means?
Is that you? Check out. Is there anything other than the body and mind? Is there anything left over that could be the I? Something which is not body, which is not mind?
Is there anything left over which is you, which is I? Do you not exist at all? Is there a meditator? Is there someone searching for the eye? Is there someone who’s going to get up from the seat and have a cup of tea?
Isn’t there somebody there? An eye? Let’s dedicate the merit for my meditation. By this virtue, may I quickly realize true Buddhahood and transfer each sentient being to in an enlightened state. May the precious Buddha mind, where it is unborn, arise.
May the unborn have no decline but develop more and more. So take a comfortable stable posture. You know, if you if you feel like you’re really solid on the earth, you’re really grounded, this reflects in your mind. Confidence and determination. In your posture, confidence, determination will reflect in your mind.
And you’re really there. You’re not going to fall over and blow over. Somebody there. Just watching your breath. Very simple.
Over and over again. The moment you become aware that your mind is distracted from the object of meditation, which in this case is the breath, bring it back instantly. Don’t wait. Instantly bring it back and begin again. Again, begin again over and over and over again.
So let’s begin. Your problems, difficulties. You would. Perhaps you’ve made mistakes in the past. Perhaps you don’t like yourself now.
But you can change. You don’t have to be bound by your past, by your own self image. You’re just the person that wants happiness, basically. You don’t want to suffer. Deep down, you want happiness.
You wish yourself happiness. May I be happy. May I grow. May I change. May I I may I be all things to all people.
May I help others. Think of a friend, someone you like, about the same age, same sex. Imagine they’re before you now. Remember how much you like them, how much you care for them, with warm feelings in your heart. Wishing well.
Wishing happiness. Imagine a stranger, someone who you have no exact feelings for, that you just have an indifference. You don’t care what happens to them. This person is just like you. Exactly.
Beneath that exterior, within deep down in themselves, they want only happiness. They don’t want to suffer just like you. No difference whatsoever. No difference. Just like you.
Wish them happiness just like you would to yourself. Wish them happy. Imagine someone who disturbs your mind or who you have problems with, an enemy, someone you dislike. Again, try to go deep down beneath the exterior. There’s a person there who wants happiness.
There’s a being there who doesn’t want to suffer. And he’s struggling. She is still struggling to find that happiness, just trying to use methods, trying to use means. And in your confusion, perhaps they hurt you. Maybe they intended to.
But they’re just confused. They don’t know what other ways to happiness. If you’re really trying to practice, can you set aside the grudge in your heart for just a moment, even if they intended to hurt you? Set aside the hurt and see a suffering human being who doesn’t know what he’s doing, confused, lonely, struggling. Wish them a little bit of happiness.
Imagine all four at one time, and we’re all very much equal. We’re all searching in our own individual ways for happiness, using our own individual methods to eliminate our sufferings. We’re all struggling and trying. We’re all very much the same. We all want happiness.
None of us want to suffer. We should wish them happiness. And all the people in this room, the people who have come here sincerely trying to change, who are working to transform themselves realistically, working with their mind, making real effort. We’re all trying. We all want happiness, and we’re doing something about it.
May you all be happy. May you all find the happiness that you’re seeking. Radiate out positive feelings to everyone in the room. Open up your heart to everyone in the room. Open up your heart.
Everyone on the block, all other activities, going here, going there, sleeping, eating, they’re all dedicated to finding happiness, to eliminating their suffering. Wish them that happiness that they’re looking for. And all the people in Adelaide, hundreds and thousands of people, all going about their business, all trying to find happiness this day, this moment, this very moment. Everyone’s out there trying to find happiness. Wish them that happiness.
Give them that happiness. And everyone in South Australia. Expand your mind. Expand your heart. And everyone in Australia, the entire country.
And everyone in the world, all the races, black, red, yellow, white, sexes, shapes, languages, nationality. They’re all the same. They’re all seeking happiness. This very moment, everyone on earth is seeking And find it without any boundaries, without center. Just a pure state of being, a state which feels from the depths of its heart.
May all things be happy. May all things be happy. Let’s dedicate the merit from the meditation. Practicing mindfulness of the breathing. Another technique, it’s just another technique which might be helpful.
So we were using the technique of just watching the general breath. We know when we’re breathing in. We know when we’re breathing out. We can actually mentally note it to ourselves in, out, and then if we wish to, we can use the technique of counting In, out, one. In, out, two.
This is mental, not verbal. In, out, three. In, out, four up to five. Come back down to one up to six, and so forth up to ten. As a way of giving yourself a stronger object, a more coarse object of observation to hold your mindfulness.
The breath in itself might be too subtle. It’s not coarse enough. So another possibility of a technique, a helpful technique, is called following. And in this we merely are going to follow the breath from the tip of the nose as if we had a hollow tube running through the tip of our nose, down in front of the spinal cord, past the bottom of the lung, all the way to the navel. It’s as if there is a hollow tube running up from the tip of the nose, down and to the tip of the navel.
And we’re going to imagine that we’re going to follow the breath. As soon as it enters into the nose, it’s coming down and we’re following it down, down, down. Now actually it stops at the bottom of the lungs, doesn’t it? But we’re actually going to follow it as if it proceeded all the way down to the navel area. And then breathing out the same way, we follow it up, up, up, up into the tip of the nose.
And we can divide this up into parts to make it an even coarser object of observation. We can use a counting technique in conjunction with this following. The tip of the nose is one. We count one, and then two is somewhere midway between the heart and the tip of the nose. There’s two.
One, two Then at the heart you should be at three, so you have to keep up. You have to keep your mindfulness there so you won’t go astray. So it’s one, two, three, And then midway between the navel and the heart is four. And then at the navel, we should be up to five, and we count to five. So it’s just a matter of noting mentally.
One, two, three, four, five. And again, from the navel, one, two, up, three, four, five. So you should be at three each time at the heart area when your following reaches the heart area. So you have to have constant mindfulness, constant awareness, following the breath up and down because you’re counting and each count is at a certain position in the body. In, one, two, three, four, five.
One, two, three, four, five. It’s just a technique. If it’s helpful, you can use that to help develop your mindfulness. The constant mindfulness is necessary so you don’t miss your counting. We don’t have any special attitudes towards what we’re doing.
It’s a very simple activity. We begin to relate the thing very directly. We’re relating with the breath very directly without any overlays of fears or hopes or exotic ideas that might be associated with various practices. And whatever thought arises, we simply note it, whether it’s good or bad, whether it’s about sex or the office or You know, it doesn’t matter, it’s merely a thought. And we simply can mentally note, if you wish, thinking and go back to the breath.
Feelings arise, pleasant feelings, painful feelings, just note feeling and go back to the breath. And don’t indulge them, don’t resist them, just merely allow them to arise and they will pass away by themselves. You have to have some determination when you first begin, determining your mind, I’m not going to allow myself to indulge in my thinking or my feelings. You have to make determination as soon as the moment I become aware that my mind has strayed from the object of meditation, which in this case is the breathing, I’m going to bring it immediately back to the breath. You have to make that determination.
If you get in the habit of following through with all these mental gossip that goes on, then you’re never going to develop mindfulness. You’re never going to develop the awareness. You’re wasting a great deal of valuable time. So make a determination the moment, no matter what it is. It might be quite interesting.
Maybe you think you’re going to have some insight if you keep up with this particular mental gossip. It doesn’t matter. You can come back to it later, some other time perhaps. It’s a trick, is what it amounts to. Anyway, so you must make the determination, I’m going to bring my mind back the moment that I become aware that it has strayed from the object of meditation, that is the breath.
Okay, let’s begin. Of refuge and generation of motivation. Nāgārjuna used to say that words are for weak minds, but we’re somewhat weak at this time. We need some words to help us generate specific states of mind that are quite skillful. One of these is the state of going for refuge.
But in reciting the refuge formula, there has to be some movement of the mind, as Nāgārjuna used to say. There has to be something changing, some state actually being generated, some going to refuge. If we recite the verse of refuge a hundred thousand times without this, it’s not very meaningful. To the Buddha, the Dharma and the Supreme Assembly, I go for refuge until I am enlightened. By the merit from giving and other perfections, I reach Buddha so as to benefit beings.
To the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Supreme Assembly, I go for refuge until I am enlightened. By the merit from giving in other perfections, I reach Buddha so as to benefit beings. To the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Supreme Assembly, I go for refuge until I am enlightened. By the merit from giving and other perfections, I may reach Buddhahood so as to benefit I may. Go for refuge to the Buddha and the Dharma and the Sangha.
In going for refuge we have to have some faith in the Buddha, Dharma and the Sangha. The faith in the Buddhist sense is a type of aspiration. It’s a movement towards something. We place our hearts on something. This is the state of going for refuge.
In the Christian tradition they say, Wherever your treasure is, that’s where your heart is. This is the sense of faith in the Buddhist tradition that wherever our heart is, wherever our treasure is, our heart will be there and that’s where our faith is. So our treasure in some way has to be with the Buddha and the Dharma and the Sangha. It’s faith based on intuition, reason and experience, our own experience. When we hear many of the teachings about the Dharma, we hear about enlightenment, We hear about love and compassion, the mind of enlightenment.
This often, especially dependent upon the power of the teacher, There’s some sympathetic vibration when he talks about bodhicitta, the mind of enlightenment, he talks about love, compassion, that make life noble. It’s a vibration of, if you like, our own Buddha nature. It’s an awakening of some seed within us. It’s that one of the causes for the generation of the mind of enlightenment is the awakening of this seed by the great vehicle, spiritual master, the awakening of our compassion. He touches the cord which is seldom heard within our hearts.
And we know within our own hearts, beyond logic, beyond reason, beyond the intellect, that what he is saying is right, what he is saying is true. In the silence of our hearts, we know this to be true. And it gives us a great deal of faith in what he’s saying. When he talks about the possibilities of enlightenment, of our own Buddha nature, of our own basic sanity, when he talks about love and compassion as being the ways to real happiness. There is some harmonic vibration that’s set up.
When you pluck a string on a guitar, the stream next to it starts vibrating in sympathy and harmony. So when someone who the Dalai Lama or Lama Zopa Rinpoche begins to speak about these subjects, we have some intuitive understanding, some vibration, some sympathetic vibration that’s set up within ourselves. On this, we start to generate faith in what they’re saying. But we also have to use reasoning. Intuition is quite important.
Our emotional life is very important. But we also have to rely on our intellect. It has to play a part in our practice, an important part. If we begin to see the logical possibility, the reasonable possibility of attaining enlightenment, liberation, of happiness, it’s just not a lot of words. We begin to receive teachings on the doctrine, what is the nature of the mind?
The nature of the mind is this and this and this. Our problems are this and this. We can see logically because of the way the mind is and the nature of our problems, how these problems can be solved. We can understand the methods, the techniques intellectually, reasonably. We look at examples of people.
We see a connection between the moral, intellectual, spiritual qualities of kindness, sincerity, fearlessness, compassion, wisdom, skillful means, and the practices that these people have been involving themselves in. And this acts as some sort of evidence. This person is really together and he’s practicing this path. There must be some connection, some cause and effect relationship between this love that I feel with this person, this sense of wisdom that I see in this person, and the methods that he’s using. We see some consistency.
You know, there’s some connection, we see a reasoning process. Maybe the dharma does actually work. There are people who are actually benefiting from using these techniques. We see with our own eyes that the universe obeys certain logical laws. If we come in harmony with those laws, we can use those laws to solve our problems, to gain the happiness that we want.
This develops faith faith through reason, through intellect, through seeing, and also within our own experience. Even if our experience is very limited, we find a little bit of peace, a little bit of contentment through our whatever level of practice that we’re at, through our practice of Dharma. We find that one day we’re happy people, probably happier than we would ever thought we could imagine we would have become. Through our own experience, we’ve enjoyed some of the fruit of dharma, and this helps develop faith. So we have faith through our intuition, we have faith through reason, our intellect, and faith through our own experience.
This faith is an affirmation of our own basic goodness. Having faith, life can be good. You have this belief that you can be good, life can be happy, you can be happy. The greater our faith, the greater this expression of basic goodness, our belief and the possibilities of real happiness for ourselves and others becomes when we begin to express this in our lives. This faith is the way to change, and this faith is our refuge.
We’ve been talking about the preliminaries to the actual development of compassion and love, The preliminaries to this aspiration to seek sanity for the benefit of others. Unless we develop compassion for ourselves, wish to end our own suffering, we’re never really going to have a stable aspiration to end the sufferings of others. We’re never going to aspire to complete sanity, complete, fullest, most full potential. So we looked at our situation, and we have a chance to change. We have everything that we need now.
We are very fortunate among all the various people in the world. There are very few who have opportunities in the leisure that we have at this very moment. We looked at it from the point of view of what it would be like to be born as a starving person in Ethiopia, what it might be like to be a beggar on the streets of Calcutta, or what it might be like to be mentally deficient, blind, completely caught up with some materialistic trip. We don’t have any of these disadvantages, these hindrances. In fact, we have everything that we need.
We have intelligent minds, healthy bodies. We have some aspiration, some love, some wisdom. But this isn’t going to last forever. It’s definite that we’re going to die. That’s for sure.
And we don’t know when. That’s also true. The only thing that’s going to be of benefit at the moment of our death is how much we have developed our mind. Nothing else, no other people, no other possessions can be of any benefit at that moment. Not even our own body can help us.
So we’ve got a chance to change, and we have to change. This is basic to the practice, the recognition that we have to change, that if we keep going on the same way we are now, we are going to keep going on suffering the same way we are now. It’s not going to go away by itself. But how do we bring about this change? People say, I don’t want to suffer.
Everyone says that. But when they say it, what do they mean? They say, Oh, I don’t want to suffer. What are they saying? They say, I want my present difficulty to go away.
You know, maybe you’re having trouble with your boyfriend. Maybe you lost your job. When you say, I don’t want to suffer, you’re saying, May this present difficulty, this present problem be solved. May it go away. It’s not that they are trying to understand the basic nature of the situation, the basic nature of the problem, of suffering at all.
They don’t see the forest because of the trees. They are completely looking at individual trees. What we have to try to do is develop some perspective on the entire problem of suffering.