Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 44-minute session from a four-week introductory course, Ven Jampa Ignyen opens with a 12th-century Sakya Pandita quotation encapsulating the Buddhist path: if attached to this life, no authentic practice; if attached to saṃsāra, no renunciation; if focused only on yourself, no compassion; if grasping at self, no correct view. He illustrates the central obstacle with the Zen koan of pouring tea into an already-full cup—a crowded mind cannot truly learn. Ignyen then investigates Buddhism’s core question: the nature of mind. He traces the four sufferings (birth, sickness, age, death) that plagued humans 2,500 years ago and remain unresolved, then turns to the philosophical crux: does consciousness persist after death? Whether spirituality has genuine meaning, he argues, hinges on this answer. Throughout, he privileges dialogue and genuine inquiry over passive reception.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 2001 07 30 01 Intro to Buddhism 30-7-01.mp3
UUID: 440f4c57-a8dd-4439-bc86-8a0bca178adc
Teacher: Ven Jampa Ignyen
Collection: Intro to Buddhism (Ven Jampa Ignyen)
Date: 2001-07-30
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 44.3 minutes
Words: ~4,233
So this type of meditation, in fact, is very useful. We can practice it at any time. We don’t have to be seated down, seated, sitting down in order to practice. But if we’re walking along, if we’re sitting in a bus or driving our car or whatever, we can simply concentrate on our breath and that will help to focus our mind and allow us to relax our mind a little bit and let go of thoughts that are currently within our mind. Give us a chance, give us some space in order to investigate what we’re thinking.
So meditation on the breath is very beneficial. So tonight we’re continuing with our four week introduction to Buddhism, and last week we covered a few topics and this evening we’ll continue more or less with what we were discussing last week. Now last week, we started with a quotation from a particular Tibetan Lama who lived about eight hundred, nine hundred years ago called Sakya Pandita. And it said that when he was about twelve years old, he had this vision of a bodhisattva. A bodhisattva is someone who’s almost a fully awakened being, but a person who is practicing developing themselves in order to enlighten all sentient beings.
And this particular Bodhisattva appeared to Sakya Pandita and said to him, which means if we’re attached to this life, there is no practice of Dharma. And then he said also, If we are attached to the three realms, there is no renunciation. And then he also stated, which roughly translates as if we are interested in just our own purpose, there is no compassion. And then he also said that if we’re engaged at grasping at a self, then we don’t have the correct view of reality. So I thought to base these four weeks anyway on this particular quotation, because this quotation in a sense teaches the entire Buddhist path, in brief, of course.
In fact, the path itself to enlightenment is very extensive and not easy to understand at a glance. It takes a lot of contemplation and so on, because the path to enlightenment is really dealing with the nature of our mind itself. If the path to enlightenment exists, it only exists within our mind. It can’t be an external path. It’s not something that we can physically travel along.
And the teachings of the Buddha and all the subsequent commentaries and treatises and texts and so forth that were written are really talking about the nature of the mind. In fact, they’re basically talking about the nature of our mind as it is. So one would think that actually the mind couldn’t be that mysterious or that complicated or that difficult to understand, that so much needs to be written about it and so on. But actually our mind is that profound. And generally we use only a small amount of our mind.
We don’t comprehend the full potential of our awareness of our mind. So, of course, much is said about this. And the reason why much is said is because of the importance that people develop, that individuals develop and gain happiness, because really happiness is the measure of fulfilling our purpose, our existence. Anyway, these questions we need to examine. Basically the teachings of the Buddha are dealing with these fundamental what is the nature of the mind?
Is it possible for us to develop our mind, to develop understanding, to develop wisdom? Is it possible to develop compassion? Is it possible to get beyond where we are at present, to improve ourselves, to develop, to get beyond our fears, to really establish what we hope to establish? So these questions are very important. So anyway, part of this four week course is also, I think, going to be raising these issues, and of course if anyone has anything that they would like to talk about in particular or raise in particular, feel free at any time.
I think, as I mentioned last week, my training in Buddhist philosophy really comes from debating. And so this is what I’m more used to, sitting down and debating these issues. Because certainly the benefit of contemplating these issues doesn’t come from simply listening to someone else, it comes from interacting and working through these issues. Because basically what we seek is just the facts of these issues. We don’t want to add more than what we already have.
In fact, we already have so many preconceptions about things. We’re almost full to the top of our head of preconceptions, full to the brim of preconceptions. In a sense, we don’t need more of those. What we need is a way of developing understanding about our mind as it is in the present, about how we actually exist in the present. There’s a Zen Koan about this in Japan.
Once a university professor came to visit a Zen monk, and the university professor sat down and then he asked him if he wanted a cup of tea. And the professor said, okay, I’ll have a cup of tea. Thank you. So the Zen monk started to pour tea and the cup was full and he kept pouring and he kept pouring and the teas ran onto the table and off the table onto the floor and it kept pouring. And then the professor said, stop, stop.
What are you doing? Stop pouring the tea. Can’t you see it’s overflowing? And the Zen monk then said to him, if one comes to investigate these issues, one needs to do so not with a mind full of conceptions or words to that effect. In one sense, the more conceptions we have, preconceptions about things, the less room there is for us to actually understand how things are.
But lessening our preconceptions about things is not easy. Very, very difficult. We’re very attached to our opinions about things. And if they’re challenged by others, we get our backs up and so on. But in a way, in order to develop, we need to investigate how we think in the present, what our assumptions are, where we’re coming from.
This is the whole process of learning, of developing understanding. And fundamentally, this is what also what Buddhism is about. It’s just about the way we come to an understanding of anything. Or in other words, how we come to a misunderstanding about anything. In a way, the entire process to attaining enlightenment is just undoing our misconceptions and establishing correct conceptions about things.
That really all is the entire path. At present we have various misconceptions. So these we need to lessen. It’s not easy to lessen our misconceptions about things. Often we don’t know which are the misconceptions.
What’s the fact and what’s not the fact. And we have various doubts about things. So in a sense, the practice of Buddhism is having a healthy doubt, generating a healthy doubt towards how we exist, how others exist and so forth. In a sense, it’s a little bit also to do with creating a space for us to understand, to develop understanding. But it’s true that at present our view of the world it’s not that our view at present needs to be completely eliminated, or the way we look at things is completely wrong.
It’s simply that within our view of the world, and of other beings and ourselves, there are certain things, there are certain misconceptions that exist that need to be investigated. So this situation existed at the time of the Buddha, and much of what the Buddha was involved with was wandering around India from the time of his enlightenment to the time of his death, and just engaging in conversations with others on these issues. India was a very controversial place. There are many different religions. Every type of religion you could imagine was represented at the time of the Buddha.
Of course, there were the Brahmins and the Vedas, and, there were the Jains. There were fire worshipers. There were the Zoroastrians. There were all manner of views that were put forward by different people. They were the materialists, and so on, the nihilists.
And, so the Buddha lived in an environment similar to ours, ours, where there are many different views that people have. So much of the conversations of the Buddha were dealing with others with various ideas about how individuals existed, what liberation was, what the meaning of death was, what the meaning of birth is. Can an individual attain liberation? Is it possible? What’s the nature of the current mind?
And so on. So as the Buddha wandered around India, he came across many different people. And and, of course, to this day, we can read accounts of these conversations that were had. And these are quite useful because even today, the situation fundamentally hasn’t changed. The superficial elements of our society and our culture, our language and so on, all of these things change over a period, over a hundred years, a thousand years.
These things do change, but fundamentally the situation is still the same. At the time of the Buddha, the human beings had four fundamental suffering: birth, sickness, old age, and death. Today, two thousand five hundred years later, human beings are suffering from birth, sickness, old age, and death. The same fears that occurred at the time of the Buddha occur now. And the limitations that existed then exist now, there’s no change..
For all the progress of modern humanity, there’s not, the human race has still not gotten beyond these four limitations. And one of the most important meditations within Buddhism is this meditation on death, this reflecting on the nature of our existence that we are impermanent, and that we are gradually, gradually, breath by breath, we’re moving closer to the state of death, to our own death. And really, much of what Buddhism is talking about is what is of benefit to us at the time of death. So this life, in a sense, the importance of this life is working out what’s gonna be a benefit to us at the time of death. And if we can take care of that situation, then what will be a benefit to us in this life will also take care of itself.
If in fact we put it the other way around, we’re going to look after what we do in this life first, then we probably won’t get to the end of investigating what we need to do before our death comes. Our death will come and we’re still trying to, you know, set ourselves up, still trying to finalize our plans and everything that we want to achieve in this life, inevitably, before that’s finished, our death will appear. And we know this already. We know that we may die, you know, in a year’s time, even sooner. But generally, we’re quite attracted, we’re quite attached to our plans for this life.
That’s just part of our nature as a human being. But really, when we think about it, we should actually take care of our death first. And once we’ve taken care of that, then we can really relax and just enjoy this life. Because our future time beyond this life is very long. The time we have beyond this life stretches on for, we know, billions of years.
This life may last another ten, twenty, thirty, may last another fifty years, But the time beyond that is very long. We should investigate. We should spend some time investigating what happens beyond that point. Is there a do we exist beyond death? And if so, what’s of benefit to us beyond death?
So much of the teachings of the Buddha revolved about this point. What’s of benefit beyond death? What is the nature of death, and what’s of benefit exist beyond death? Do we continue? Do we have any doubt?
Excuse me. Do we have any doubts about this? So this, of course, was an issue at the time of the Buddha two and a half thousand years ago. And it will remain an issue for human beings because the fact of death is unsatisfactory. We shouldn’t have to die.
And in fact, these days science is trying its level best to overcome death by material means. We just can, you know, work out what genes are required in order to maintain life, then we should be able to patch up human being indefinitely so a human being does not experience death. Also that, you know, we can do stem cell research, and we can grow new organs. When the heart wears out, we just put in a replacement heart organ. When the lungs wear out, when the kidney, the spleen and so forth, when these wear out, we can just All of this, this attempt by modern science is really an attempt to get beyond death.
Actually, this attempt is very good. There’s nothing wrong with seeking to overcome death, because we really, we don’t want to die. Even some people at the point of death, they either have their head cut off or their whole body immersed or frozen solid with the hope that in time science will find a means for reawakening that body and so on. There’s many, many strategies that are becoming available to science to try and overcome death. But from a Buddhist point of view, the physical body is only the basis for our continued existence.
And in fact, this physical body that we have is not really ourselves. Even when it is exhausted, even when it is consumed in the cremation, then still from a Buddhist point of view, a person continues. There is no cessation at that point, because a person also is established by the nature of their mind. The feelings, the discrimination, the conceptions, the hopes, the fears, and so forth, all of the various emotions and states of awareness that an individual has also reflects, that person or is the basis of imputation of a person. And that continues because the nature of the mind is not physical.
Again, if the nature of the mind is physical, then when we die, we ourselves as a person are finished and there’s nothing we can do about it. So, for that reason, I wonder why people are attracted to a materialist philosophy because if one believes that even our awareness is physical, is simply a product of the genes of our parents or our environment or a combination of both, then we would finish, we would stop when our physical body is destroyed. There’s not much hope in such a system. It doesn’t really give much hope to the individual. We’re finished as soon as we die.
Not much practical value in accepting that as the way we exist. Is this true? That’s true. Perhaps it is a comfort to think that we do continue beyond death. I mean, when we look at the situation, we can think of many different ways of approaching it.
We might have an interest in there being a human being continuing beyond death because we’re attached to our existence and so on, when actually we’ve completely finished at the point of death. In fact, if we do stop at the point of death, there is no religion. Religion is not really possible. Spiritual paths are not really possible, because a spiritual path only can exist if a person exists beyond death. Does anyone accept that?
Or is it that even though we don’t exist beyond this one life, we could still have a spiritual life or spiritual development, even though we would finish at the point of death? This is more a humanitarian view, isn’t it? But why does one act why would one engage in positive actions in this life if one didn’t exist beyond this life? Why would one bother? True.
Right. Right. So some benefits do come from that. So is that the only reason why one would engage in, you know, positive actions in this life as a spiritual path? But if one wasn’t gonna exist beyond this life, would that still be worthwhile?
That’s true, isn’t it? Yeah. Yeah. Sort of enlightened selfishness. Well, so it is possible to have a spiritual path just in this one lifetime or a path of selfishness.
So if we’re in fact engaged in helping others in this lifetime, would that be a spiritual path? Right. Right. Right. Right.
Right. This is almost a humanitarian view, isn’t it? It is. What is the humanitarian view? Isn’t it?
That one aids humanity in this life. There’s a benefit to humanity. Is that a religion? Is humanitarianism a religion? I’m wondering about yeah.
I’m wondering about this because the first line of this particular statement by this twelfth century Tibetan is that if one is involved or is only focusing on this life, then there’s no practice of religion. In Tibetan, it says, There’s no Dharma. It is not Dharma, meaning it’s not religion. It’s not a spiritual practice. And it is an issue actually, because as the Dalai Lama has pointed out, I remember going to a teaching by the Dalai Lama and he had just been back from the west and he was trying to explain to the Tibetans there what humanitarianism was.
Because from the Tibetan point of view, because they’re a traditional Eastern civilizational culture, and there are many views that arise in the West that they have no idea about. These views don’t exist in Tibet, or even in India, they’re not so common. And he was trying to explain what humanitarianism was. In Tibetan, it’s the view of the human, which is this view to help human beings without a particular spiritual purpose. I mean, it’s like we do what we can in this life to help others whether or not we live or don’t live beyond this life, but without any view to that at all.
But still it’s nice to help. There’s something useful, there’s something pleasant in doing that. It does, isn’t it? Right. Well, that’s right.
humanitarianism even brings into it animals too, doesn’t it? Yeah. It puzzles me a bit as why animals come into a humanitarianist view, but it should be more a sentient being view. Anyway, anyway, this view that we have in our society is quite pervasive and it is very beneficial. This view to benefiting other human beings.
And what is the justification for that? Well, I don’t know if that’s much of a deterrent, actually. Yeah. Yeah. No.
It’s interesting that even without a religious view, the view of humanitarianism arises in the West. It’s this view to helping other beings, other other humans in particular. And it’s really an indication of the state of our current society, that religion itself is on the wane. But even so, people enjoy helping others, so they justify it by calling it humanitarianism. Don’t have to call it a religion or this or that, which is very good.
And we’re probably suspicious about trying to add anything more to that by saying, wait a minute, maybe the human being does continue beyond this life. That should also be brought into it. It doesn’t matter. Yeah. It’s funny.
From the Tibetan point of view, they find it almost inconceivable that a view of humanitarianism could arise. Because for them, and many Eastern people see, well, wait a minute, if you’re only talking about this one life, there’s really very little meaning to existence at all. That one wouldn’t be really motivated to do much if there was only just this one narrow existence. That in fact, the pith, the essence of existence, really implies that it goes beyond. That if there is any pith or there is any substance to our existence, it must be that our existence continues.
And that it’s in our existence continuing that one finds the the motivation for engaging in a spiritual practice. Sorry. Yeah. Oh, absolutely. True.
There’s nothing how do we know we have another life? It’s true. No, that’s true. Although, I think that needs to be discussed at a great length actually. Because certainly this life is very important and we should seek to work it out, seek to do something positive in this life, something that’s good for us and good for others.
Although actually, a Buddhist point of view, it’s only having a thought about future lifetimes that one can actually bring, or what, achieve the best in this lifetime. That if one doesn’t have a conception of future lives, yeah, it’s hard to develop. It reminds me of a book I once read called Reincarnation: A Second Chance. And the whole book was about, you know, how great it was that in fact we do live again because all the mistakes that we make in this life, hoping we learn a little bit from those, we can put those to work in our next life and avoid some of the pitfalls that we experience now. But it’s true, this is absolutely central.
Do we need to be concerned at all about our future life? We have a future life, is it important? We’re already very busy with this life anyway, and we don’t have enough time to think about all the things we gotta do in this life. Need another another ten hours a day that would help us. Then if we have to think about our next life and the one after that, then it seems to be just adding more to our burden.
If we die and we cease to exist, then we don’t live forever, do we? Even if, you know, our genetic material was saved somewhere. Is that yeah. This is a very interesting question. Is a very interesting question because, you know, whether in fact computers can think or whether in fact our awareness is physical or not is really the question or the area that’s being raised or focused on.
This actually is very central to our situation. In fact, if we are purely material and our current awareness, our feelings, our experience, emotions and so on, if all of these are just material processes, then definitely, when our current physical body has ceased, stopped breathing, brain function stopped, We’re consigned to the funeral pyre, when the body is consumed on the funeral pyre, we’re finished. If our present awareness and emotions, if they’re just physical, if they’re just atoms and molecules, Our situation is solved then. But even This is very interesting. Yeah.
This is implied. Statement I think made eight hundred, nine hundred years ago is, well, it actually was made to a Tibetan audience, and the Tibetans completely, pretty much believe in future life. So not many people were going to dispute that. But I would imagine that part of his motivation would also have been that if people in future, know, read this, who don’t accept these views, then maybe it will provoke discussion of the issues because the issue is so important, whether we continue it to exist or not. I mean, it’s important for us at present.
We want to continue to exist into the next moment, into the next moment, into the next We want to be here by, you know, for tomorrow and the day after that. Just what is the measure of our existing? What are we as individuals? What is our mind? What is our body?
Are really quite important issues. Well, it said that the awareness that we have continues. So the habits we have from one life will pass into another life. That’s an energy. It’s a type of energy.
Yeah. It’s just like our current awareness as it continues from moment to moment. It said that at the time of death, even on the basis, the physical basis of that awareness, is destroyed, the awareness itself continues. Same mechanism that is continuing at present. It’s said to continue through the same mechanism that allows it to continue at present.
Right? But the physical basis changes from a gross physical basis to a very subtle one. But in fact, all these issues are really point to the very nature of the mind itself. What is the mind in the present? What is our awareness?
What are our feelings in the present? What are these things? Are they physical or not physical? Yeah. In a way, it’s a very good thing for Westerners at present because the West has a very strong tradition of logic and analysis.
We have scientific method. Westerners, we Westerners, we tend to be quite practical, able to use physical things and develop them for all purposes, electricity, airplanes, computers, and so on. And so at present, it’s a good period in Western civilization to investigate these issues, assuming that they’re important. Because the West does have the capacity to actually understand one way or the other, how we exist. But of course, if we’re just focused on this one life, then in a way it doesn’t matter so much.
In a way, Buddhism itself is not focused on just this one life. It’s more focused on the possibility of unending future lifetimes.