Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. What does it take to move from self-centered helping to genuine compassion? In this 45-minute talk, Ven Jampa Gendun opens with a guided reflection on the three levels of dissatisfaction — pain, the disappointment of change, and the exhausting burden of ego — then explains analytic versus stabilizing meditation through the image of an eagle that flaps its wings to rise and glides when airborne. He covers mindfulness of breathing as a pure stabilizing practice and unpacks refuge through a radio-antenna metaphor. The session’s central argument is a three-stage model: loving oneself first, then opening genuine relationships, then arriving at selfless spontaneous response. He closes by grounding karma in everyday cause and effect, illustrated by a king who ordered all his roads covered in leather rather than simply wrapping his own feet.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 07 WtWNN 1987 08 31.mp3
UUID: 7011f73f-6dac-4b40-a0f3-577af969079d
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: What the world needs now (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 1987-08-31
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 45.9 minutes
Words: ~4,910
Now think about your mental dissatisfaction. Past experiences of loneliness and depression, frustration, jealousy, being hurt, having your feelings hurt, losing something. Take a few examples. Experience them. This is some underlying basic attitude.
You know, if somebody hurts you, feelings of loneliness, frustration, is there any thread that goes through all these various mental sufferings that we experience? Can you see any pattern, any nature? Do they fall into any pattern? Can you remember any past pleasures which you now look upon as not really being pleasurable? Can’t imagine how you ever thought how that could be happiness.
Now you can see it just as another way of suffering. Have your attitudes towards what some past happiness changed, some past pleasure? Think about the dissatisfaction of change. You know, you have a nice day with friends at the beach, but you have to part. You each have to go your own ways.
The sun sets. Is there any underlying feeling of disappointment? Maybe you saw a good movie you’re enjoying, and the movie ends. A beautiful sunset, a holiday comes to an end, a nice meal. Is there any type of happiness that you can hold on to?
Any pleasure which is constant? Find all your objects of pleasure constantly turning into objects of displeasure, and then back into pleasure, displeasure, up and down, over and over. Isn’t it the thing which brings you the most pleasure is also the thing which brings you the most pain? Is there anything that you can hold on to for happiness? Consider the dissatisfactoriness pervasive conditioning, the burden of the ego, having constantly to watch yourself.
Constantly securing your territory and protecting it, Constantly having to reestablish your image in front of everyone and yourself. It gets tiring. The underlying feeling that maybe the whole of life is totally meaningless. It’s all meaningless. And the fear of going out of existence, being swallowed up by the universe, being no more.
Let’s dedicate the merit from having meditated. By this virtue, may I quickly realize Guru Buddhahood and transfer each sentient being to that enlightened state. May the precious bodhimind where it is unborn arise. May that born have no decline, but develop more and more. A very rough categorization of meditation teachings.
One is analytic and the other is stabilizing or fixative. In analytic meditation, we do actually perform an investigation. We are trying to penetrate into the object, its nature or some aspect of the object. For example, when we meditate on the emptiness, we’re trying to penetrate into its ultimate nature. Also, we think or contemplate death, trying to — by analyzing, investigating, trying to generate a specific state of mind through analysis involves thinking, involves an investigation.
Then on the other hand, there is stabilizing meditation, which merely holds the object and no longer investigates, no longer analyzes the object. It merely is holding the object stably. We have to make use of both of these types of med meditation, and we have to use them alternately. When we meditate for example on death, emptiness, selflessness, the precious opportunity that we have to change, and we’re using a very deep analysis. We’re going through various topics and thinking about them, contemplating them, using examples of our own experience.
Finally, when we reach some sort of state, we generate some feeling, which is actually what we’re trying to achieve. Then we we stabilize, we take that, and we cease analysis, and we actually hold that state. We stabilize or hold that hold on to that particular state as long as we can. And that, like a like a dry sponge absorbing water, we saturate the mind with this, this state, like absorbing this particular state. And then as our this feeling will begin to degenerate, again, we perform analysis, trying to again induce that same state, even stronger and more powerful.
Again, we stabilize once we’ve, attained that. We stabilize, fix our mind on that state. Again, perform analysis, and ultimately going back from stabilizing to analytic meditation teachings. It’s like It’s compared to a large Like an eagle. You know, it it has to expand expend a lot of energy as it rises up into the air, flapping its wings.
And then it reaches a certain height, and then it it ceases to flap its wings, expand energy, it just sort of glides. It glides. And then it again, it flaps its wings and rises up, and again it glides. And this is the way our meditation should proceed. It’s the nature of analytic meditation for ordinary beings, for ordinary people who haven’t achieved for for example, the calm abiding and special insight, the union of these two, that our analytic meditation or investigative meditation has a tendency to excite the mind, scatter the mind.
Therefore, we have to stabilize. But for ordinary meditators, stabilization has a tendency to dull the mind. We have a thinking of the mind, the power of the mind degenerates, So we have to raise the mind up through analysis. So we have to alternate between analysis, analytic meditation, and stabilizing meditation in order to get a proper balance, and also to cultivate and habituate, familiarize ourselves with particular skillful states of mind that we’ve generated. So mindfulness of breathing, And even when we talk about analysis, investigative meditation, it doesn’t necessarily have to be for investigations in the point of view of thought, words.
We can do investigative meditation simply by looking at something. For example, when we do a visualization. Anyway, first, let’s let’s talk a few words about mindfulness. Mindfulness has three primary characteristics. One of them is that, first, we must be familiar with whatever object that we’re going to be mindful of.
If we’re We cannot be mindful of an object which we have never seen before, which we have not experienced before. Therefore, we have to gain some familiarity with the object before we can become mindful of it. And then there’s the quality of of holding the object in such a way that there’s there’s no forgetfulness. There’s no losing of the object. And then there’s the quality of not being distracted to other objects.
Mindfulness should have these three these three qualities. So if we exemplify this, you know, we take a We want to do a visualization meditation. For example, Buddha Śākyamūni, we look at the picture or or an image in order to familiarize ourselves with the with the visual aspect of Śākyamūni Buddha. This is the first aspect. Then we within our mind’s eye, we try to see see the object visually, not with our, you know, our actual our eye organ, but within the mental consciousness, using the mental consciousness to try to remember the appearance of the object.
Initially, we’re doing This is an analytic meditation. We’re seeing, oh, how many arms? One hand resting on the on his knee, and the left hand is in his lap holding a begging bowl, and how many arms, is the eye in the right place. We’re analyzing the figure. But at one point, we must cease this analysis and be satisfied with whatever we have.
Maybe we don’t see anything. Maybe we just see it, a little yellow spot. Then you cease trying to develop the visualization anymore, you’re content with that, and then you perform stabilizing meditation. If you go on trying to analyze, investigate, trying to reorganize, again and again clarify your visualization, this will tend to excite your mind and disrupt your stabilizing meditation, and you won’t be able to hold the object. So whatever When you begin a visualization, you try first to, you know, to create the mental image.
And once you have some image, be content with that, be satisfied, quit analyzing, and merely hold that whatever it is. Even if it’s only a yellow spot, even if you don’t see anything, merely hold the attention to where it should be, to where it might appear if it did appear at all. Don’t keep analyzing. This will disrupt your stabilizing meditation. You won’t be able to hold the object.
Your mind will become excited and distracted. In the mindfulness of breathing, as it’s obvious by the name, we’re becoming mindful of the breathing. It’s purely a stabilizing meditation. We’re not analyzing the breath. We can analyze the breath for its ultimate nature, whether it’s a coarse or subtle, you know, whether it’s how it is influencing the mind.
The act the breath does influence the mind. You know, longer breaths have a tendency to calm the mind. As the breath as your mindfulness of breathing, develops, your breath will become more subtle, longer, and this will this will influence the mind. And we can we can note this, we can be aware of this. But initially, we’re just trying to be mindful of the breath itself without any sort of analyzing what is the nature of the breath or how is it affecting the body and mind.
Just holding the breath. It’s merely a stabilizing meditation. So we’ll begin with mindfulness and breathing. And you can we can use this technique of either being aware of the general in and out of the breathing, knowing when you’re breathing in, knowing when you’re breathing out, counting one through five if you wish, or the following meditation beginning at the the nose tip one, down two, three, four, five, navel one, two, back up, and so forth. Whatever works best for you.
But you may have to make a firm determination at the beginning of your meditation. I am not going to allow my mind to dwell on any other object aside from my breath. You must make this determination very clearly. Otherwise, you’re going to get in the habit of, you know, indulging in your, mental wanderings. You won’t You’ll bring your You’ll be reluctantly, after a few moments of following through some with some fantasy or some memory, bring you Well, maybe I should get back to my meditation now.
Make the determination. This very determination acts as a a a cause to help you bring you back your mind instantly back to the object in meditation. It acts it sets the intention of mind. Now, I’m not going to I’m not going to indulge whether fantasy or memory or whatever. I’m not going to indulge in it.
Instantly, when I become aware that my mind is not on my breathing, I’m going to bring it back. This will very beneficial setting the intention of your mind, your motto not your your intention in mind. Make some firm determination. So we’ll begin, and then we’ll recite the bodhicitta refuge prayer. To the Buddha, the Dharma and the Supreme Assembly, I go for refuge in and enlightened.
By the merit from giving in other perfections, may I reach Buddhahood so as to benefit beings. To the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha, I go for refuge in time and enlightened. On the merits of giving in other perfections, may I reach Buddhahood so as to benefit beings. To the Buddha, the Dharma and supreme assembly, I go for refuge in time enlightened. I may merit from giving other perfections.
May I reach Buddhahood so as to benefit beings? I go for refuge to the Buddha and the Dharma and the supreme assembly, the spiritual community, we go for refuge to our own wisdom. But this is not to say that we there is not a refuge outside of ourselves. There are beings who have transcended the ego, who have gone beyond, who are continually seeking to help us from their side. This is in the cases of our our spiritual community amongst ourselves.
Those who have some understanding, some wisdom, who are aspiring on a right path. They are a worthy source of refuge. They can help us. Then there are beings who have completely transcended all the bounds of ego, completely gone beyond. And from their side, they’re continually trying using their very skillful means to help us, to guide us along our path.
And we have to open ourselves up to their enlightened actions, the Buddha activities. As Holiness once said that, you know, it’s like extending your radio radio antenna. The longer antenna we have, the more these radio waves we can pick up. Likewise, the more we can make ourselves available to the benign, the beneficial influences of these transcendent beings, the greater we can be helped. And this is we talked about yesterday, was through the power of faith.
The faith that said that there is possible to go beyond, and that there are those who have actually attained such states. A faith that we too can do the same. So in this way, extend our own antenna to pick up the the beneficial influences of the, you know, of holy beings, of transcendent beings, who can be of a benefit to us. It’s said that the Buddhas are like wish granting trees. You know, they they have all this fruit, continually producing all these whatever is needed by sentient beings, but it’s very much up to us to come and pick the tree.
They can’t do it. They can’t force us. It’s our choice. So it’s through our If we make effort, then we can be helped, then we can help others. But if we don’t make any effort, then there’s no way others can help us, and there’s no way we can help others.
It’s very much our responsibility. It’s working together between those who have gone beyond and ourselves who are trying to do the same together. And we do this in the context of an ultimately skillful means of developing our fullest potential. That is, we do it motivated in some way to benefit others. Generally, we try to help others, make we make a nuisance out of ourselves.
We make demands upon others. So we have to check up why are we trying to help others. Quite often, our motivation is because we want to distract ourselves from ourselves, or we want something in return for our help. So ultimately, probably in this in this way of looking at it, we want others to love us. It’s our basic motivation because we don’t love ourselves.
So we’re looking for that love outside of ourselves. This may be our basic motivation for trying to help others. So in the first step in trying to help others, we have to begin to love ourselves, to make friends with ourselves, to feel compassion for ourselves, to quit torturing ourselves. And then the second step, once we begin to accept all the various aspects of ourselves within the context of a critical intelligence, is to begin to communicate with others, to open ourselves to others, to establish relationships, and thereby gradually to help others. It takes a long time.
It’s a long process of disciplined patience to be able to benefit others. We can’t jump into other people’s territory. You know, other people have signs saying, you know, keep off my grass, you know, prohibited area. You just don’t go invading other people’s territory. You have to build up trust and a relationship, which takes some patience.
Even when you have begin to care about yourself enough where you begin to concern yourself with others. Otherwise, we’re gonna make a nuisance of ourselves. And then the third stage in helping others is selfless help. So, you know, as I said, when when Generally, we seek to help others, there’s something that we’re looking for in return, some kind of praise, something some some feeling of inadequacy that we see that we can get from this other person in general. It’s basically love and security that we’re seeking from others.
But when we reach the stage of selflessness, of selfless help, in actual true compassion, we don’t do things because it brings us pleasure, simply because things need to be done. We’ve made friends with ourselves, we’ve stabilized our own self image, we know who we are, We’ve accepted ourselves. There’s nothing to hide, and we begin to forget about ourselves. We no longer have to keep reaffirming our self image, bolstering ourselves up, protecting ourselves, defending ourselves. You’re well centered.
You know who you are. You don’t have to be a parasite on others, nor do you have to be afraid of others. Our response is selfless to the needs of others. It’s like an environmental generosity, where there’s a need and there’s a natural outflowing to fulfill that need. It’s very spontaneous.
This is the idea of the wish granting tree of a Buddha. They have no intention of helping sentient beings. They’re not thinking, you know, this sentient being is this, and this sentient being needs this. There is a need, there is a natural outflowing, an environmental generosity where they which within their skillful means, whatever way they can benefit, naturally evolves spontaneously. First we have to learn to not make a nuisance out of ourselves.
We have to make friends with ourselves, begin to communicate, open up relationships with others. In opening and communicating with others, generally, we want to show others only our best side. There’s no possible If we have this tendency that we want to show only the best side, that there’s certain aspects of ourselves that we want to hide, then there can be real no there can be no real communication and no opening to others. If we begin to care about ourselves, feel good about ourselves, and open up ourselves to others, then there’s a real possibility that we can benefit others. We can help others.
So we’ve been discussing in generating the love and compassion as a way of fulfilling our own potential and benefiting others, the necessary preliminaries to actually developing a stable, sincere love and compassion which seeks to benefit others, which isn’t self centered, self-referring, self-referential, which isn’t looking always looking back to us and say, how am I doing? Am I am I being loved in in return for my love? Are people being compassion in return for my help? So we in this process, have to we were discussing the four preliminary contemplations of seeing the opportunity that we have, appreciating the chance to change. If we realize the nature of our mind as being not one with the our defilements or not one with ignorance, that these can be removed from the mind, that we have everything that we need to do this.
But this opportunity is not going to last forever. We have to make use of this chance because it’s definite that we’re going to die, and we don’t know when. And at the time of our death, only thing which is going to be a benefit to us is how much we have developed our mind. This is all we can take with us. This is all that can accompany us.
Other people, our possessions, and even our own body are going to have to remain behind, and we go alone. Then we talked about the the nature of our problem, and that is investigating the dissatisfactory quality of the habitual neurotic states of mind that you’re continually recreating unsatisfactory patterns, which we call cyclic existence. The way that we relate with the world. Now, there’s there’s nothing wrong with the world. There’s nothing wrong with the various objects in the world.
You know, as the it says in the Christian bible, there is nothing outside of a person which defiles him, but only that from which comes from within will defile you. To a mind that’s pure, all things are pure. This place where we’re sitting right now is a pure land. If this isn’t a pure land, then pure lands don’t exist at all. It’s simply the way we relate with these various objects.
If we relate with them unskillfully, and not in accordance with their actual nature, not in accordance with the reality, we’re going to suffer. If if on the other hand, we we begin to understand their nature, how the the law of cause and effect is operating and act in accordance with it, we’re not going to suffer. So we investigated the nature of suffering, the nature of dissatisfactionness, in the three levels of the dissatisfactionness of pain, of change, and pervasive conditioning. We have a tendency to think that if we can manipulate the various objects outside of us, the people, our environment, if we can somehow arrange them in a certain pattern and hold on to that pattern, we should be able to achieve eternal happiness. That’s the feeling that we have.
We may not think that in logical terms, in rational mind, but that’s the way we conduct our lives. Continually trying to manipulate, rearrange, gather together all the necessary products for this eternal happiness. And we’re always continually disappointed, frustrated, because that can’t happen. It’s not in accordance with reality. We see all these various happinesses, pleasures outside of our own mind.
And as Rinpoche has been pointing out over and over again, all these are dependent arisings. What we call happiness is a dependent arising. What we call friends and strangers and enemies are dependent arisings. They’re very much dependent upon our own mind. So by changing our own mind, we can begin to change the world that we live in.
We can make a pure land out of what this place that we see is so dissatisfactory. There’s a story about a king who was walking down a road in a village that he ruled. And he stepped on a thorn, it was very painful to him. And he said, oh, this is terrible. Something’s got to be done about this.
I won’t have this anymore. And he went back and he called the meeting of his ministers. And he says, look at this thorn in my foot and the pain it’s caused me. So what can we have to do something about this? He said, I want all the roads in my kingdom covered with leather.
I don’t want to step on that thorn ever again. And they thought, well, the king this is impossible. It’ll take exhaust their entire treasury, the the cost of covering all the robes in your kingdom with leather. We just can’t afford it. He said, I don’t care.
It must be done. I don’t care what it takes. Do it. But one of his ministers was quite thoughtful about it, and he he said, I have I have an idea. He said he said, rather than trying to cover the entire all the roads in your kingdom with leather, why not just take a small strip of leather and cover the bottom of your feet?
And this will serve the same purpose. So we can’t control the outside world. We can’t become masters of what’s going on about us. Even Ronald Reagan has found that out. There’s no power which can become a master of saṃsāra.
It’s in its very nature that we can’t do that, but we can we can become the masters of our own mind. As the Buddha said in his collections of sayings, “By becoming your own master Who can be your master? No one else can be your master. By becoming your own master, you will be liberated. By gaining control of our own mind, we gain control over the world we live in and our own happiness.
So the fourth of these four preliminary contemplations is the subject of karma, the law of cause and effect. karma is a Sanskrit word. It merely means work, action, activity. It has the connotation of the causes or the activities, actions, and their ethical consequences. You know, ethical actions, actions have certain ethical consequences, namely happiness or suffering.
So I’m going to talk about this a little bit, cause and effect. So we’re very much familiar with cause and effect. It’s not something new to us again, in the sense of the external world. And then we use cause and effect every day of our lives. All of science is based upon the infallibility of cause and effect.
If we couldn’t depend upon certain effects arising for certain causes, then we can never predict. There would be no sense For example, you know, if you if you pick if you have a bowl and you put eggs in the bowl and flour and baking powder, a little bit of salt, some walnuts maybe. Look at that. You mix them together in your bowl and you turn on the oven, preset it to preset the heat, and you pour it into a nice baking pan. You’ve created all the causes and conditions.
You can forget that. You can walk away. You don’t have to sit there and watch it. Rise, rise. You’re dependent upon the law of cause and effect, aren’t you, in a very simple mundane way?
You’ve created the necessary causes and conditions, and you can very much rely on the infallibility. Hopefully, Hopefully, a cake, a nice cake is going to arise. And you’re going to open, you know, twenty five minutes later, you’re going to open the oven door and voila, there’s a nice cake ready for the icing. So you dip It’s a very mundane example of depending upon the law of cause and effect. You turn the key in the car, you know, it closes the circuit, electrical circuit.
The starter motor begins to turn, turning the crankshaft, maybe, causing the pistons to rise and fall. It’ll spark gasoline enters into the combustion chamber, then spark plugs fire, forcing the piston down. The flywheel turns, you know. There’s a whole process of series of cause and effects, and then you drive away. You depended upon if something you’ve turned the key and nothing happens, then you know there’s some there’s a there’s been some break in this long series causes and effects.
And if you notice the mechanics, you can begin to diagnose it and say, here’s the break in this series, this link of causes and effects. And at this my my ignition is wet or something like that. So we and we have a basic understanding of this of this external causal process, the infallibility or this this process of cause and effect with with relationship to external phenomena. Likewise, there is also the same law of effect applies to actions having certain infallible ethical consequences. If we try to come in to live in accordance with these ethical consequences, then we will have fewer problems.
It’s only when we live in disharmony. You know, for for example, you know, you’re sitting there and you have a big stone and you throw it straight up in the air. Yeah. And strangely enough, it comes back down in your head. And then now you say, oh, those damn scientists, if they had never invented the law of gravity, this this would have never happened.
And you’d be, you know, this it’s all, you know, it’s all dependent upon the fact that the scientists have been playing around with the atomic bombs and things like this. What we if a person understood that this stone is going to obey certain laws of the universe, you know, it’s going to rise at a certain height and it’s going to come down, if he understands this process, then he if he threw that stone up, he would he would naturally get out of the way. Right? He understands that this cause is going to have a particular effect. It obeys certain laws, the laws in the universe.
If we live in harmony with the various laws in the universe, the laws in nature, the law of cause and effect, then we can if we then we can adjust our behavior, our body, speech and mind to accord with these, then we can produce the desired effects that we’re seeking. If we, live in discordance with it, then there’s no way that we can achieve the happiness that we want and avoid the suffering that we don’t want. Simply obeying infallible relationship between law, causes and effects. So we talk about karma.
So karma is a Sanskrit word. It doesn’t mean Some people equate it with fatalism. That’s your karma, man. What can you do about? It just means that they that there exists this relationship between our actions and their and their ethical consequences, that actions have effects, happiness, suffering, and neutral effects.
There are different types of actions. You know, we usually use the terms virtuous, non virtuous. And if you like, you can say skillful actions, non skillful actions. Skillful actions produce happiness. Unskillful actions have the effect of suffering.
So in general, extreme non virtuous actions have the effect of pain in the sense of the six realms, rebirth in the three lower realms. It is as a a hell being, a hungry ghost as an animal. Whereas, skillful actions have the consequences of being the three up being of taking rebirth in the three upper realms as a human, demigod, or god. But as, we can think about the fact that these various realms can also apply to within the human realm.