Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 19-minute talk, Venerable Jampa Ignyen situates mindfulness within the full Buddhist path, showing how it connects ethical conduct to wisdom. He teaches the Noble Eightfold Path in three categories: ethics (right speech, action, and livelihood—avoiding harm and harmful occupations); concentration (right effort, mindfulness, and samadhi); and wisdom (right view and right conception, meaning renunciation). Ethical conduct is presented as the non-negotiable foundation without which mindfulness cannot develop into the wisdom of selflessness. The four objects of mindfulness are rooted in virtue and lead toward the view of emptiness that liberates from saṃsāra. In the Q&A, he addresses how renunciation, bodhicitta, and emptiness develop together in practice, emphasizing patience and gradualism as essential.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 09 Mindful Life 1996 05 19.mp3
UUID: 8b35c1e9-baa0-4874-92ff-2cd2ce35ffac
Teacher: Ven Jampa Ignyen
Collection: y Living the Mindful Life (Ven Jampa Ignyen)
Date: 1996-05-19
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 19.0 minutes
Words: ~1,329
Then also there’s the truth of the cause of that, which is karma and affliction. The root cause is the chief affliction, which is ignorance. The path to overcoming the cause of suffering is the noble truth of the path, And that again involves eight things. And if I remember those eight things, just briefly summarized in three different groups. Buddhism likes to have lots of class classifications of different things.
It’s there’s three concerned with ethics, three concerned with concentration, and two with wisdom. So the the path involves firstly three to do with morality, which is right speech, correct speech, correct action. And correct livelihood. So those three mean not committing the three negative actions of body, which is not killing, stealing, or sexual misconduct. Then the three sorry.
The four virtuous actions of speech, which means not lying, not slandering others, not using harsh speech, and not engaging in idle chatter and so on. It’s hard to avoid. And then livelihood. Third one is right livelihood, which means avoiding occupations which are going to harm sentient beings, such as being a butcher or selling alcohol, drugs, and so on. Avoiding occupations that will collect negative karma and be an obstacle for our development.
So they’re the three levels of ethical behavior. Then in terms of developing concentration, there are three. There’s correct energy, which involves applying ourselves to developing, not being overcome by laziness and putting things off and but applying a certain amount of effort as we can within our capacity, but remembering that we need a bit of effort to get ourselves started from time to time. And then right mindfulness, which is the theme of the course, the four objects of mindfulness. And then right concentration.
Right concentration is the development of Samādhi, development of single pointed concentration where where the mind becomes pliant and usable. The gross faults of the mind are overcome. Mind single pointedly can remain on an object. We attain a great deal of happiness and bliss from attaining that state. And we can use that state of mind to develop wisdom, which is the third.
Third aspect of the eightfold path. So in in wisdom, there are also two two aspects. And the first one is right view. So right view here refers to the four noble truths. Understanding the four noble truths as they are.
Understanding selflessness, the view of selflessness, the view of the four noble truths. And the last one is right conception, which refers to developing the conception of renunciation. Renouncing the unsatisfactory nature of saṃsāra, not being attached to it, seeing that it’s not gonna produce the goods, seeing that it’s not not what we really seek, and we’re not gonna find happiness within saṃsāra. Samsāra itself, what is saṃsāra? Samsāra is just the contaminated aggregates, the current physical body, feelings, discrimination, intention, consciousness that we possess that is born of ignorance, born of contaminated causes.
So that’s a very rough summary of the the path. But what the path really refers to is just the wisdom which understands selflessness, developing that wisdom. And that leads to the attainment of the truth of cessation, cessation of saṃsāra, cessation of suffering, which is a state that’s existed from beginningless time. It’s permanent, and it’s the mere absence of problems, mere absence of unhappiness, mental unhappiness, physical pain that arises from contaminated causes, mainly from ignorance itself, ignorance of the self. Sorry.
I missed that. But what did you say? Ignorance regarding itself. Truth of cessation. Truth of cessation refers to nirvana.
It’s an ultimate truth. It’s the one thing that is true within itself. It exists in a way it appears to exist. So they’re the two truths to be established. And the truth of unsatisfactoriness and the truth of the cause of unsatisfactoriness are the two truths to be abandoned.
Truth of path and the truth of cessation are to be established. But the main thing, I think, for us is the truth of path. It begins with the three points of of ethics or morality, practicing that, avoiding non virtues of body and speech is the foundation of the path. So that means not harming others, giving up the intention to harm others, not engaging in any any form of harm towards other. So in brief, here are four objects of mindfulness.
The first three relate to just who we are as individual individuals. And the fourth, mindfulness of dharma, refers to just how we function as individuals, how our how problems arise for us, and the way in which we can overcome these problems depends on developing the wisdom of selflessness, and that itself depends on generating the right view about how things are, and that depends on developing ethics supported by by ethics. So in brief, what that means is that we should develop positive intention towards others and be mindful of developing positive intention. And that will become a basis for our future happiness. Also, it’ll be a cause for our current happiness.
And we should put some energy into doing that, into developing positive intention. Journey of ten thousand miles began with the first step. So it’s just we do a little bit every day. Well, that’s about what I thought to to say anyway. There’s still time if anyone has any comments or maybe another five minutes.
Yeah. Yes. Yeah. I think it’s evaluating our situation and seeing that noting the nature of saṃsāra, then renunciation develops. It’s the right conception of our situation.
It’s the development of renunciation, the right assessment. But it does come well, it it goes hand inherently. There’s the three principles of the path, renunciation, bodhicitta, and the view of voidness. And, yeah, they they really go together. The it depends on what sort of practitioner one is, whether renunciation is developed first or not.
But it can be developed simultaneously with the view of emptiness, the view of or the or bodhicitta, the mind of enlightenment. You need to develop at least an artificial level of renunciation. Yeah. In yeah. Yeah.
I’m not happy. I want this to stop. I yeah. I think that’s that’s very true. That, yeah, we make a little bit of progress here, and then we don’t seem to make much progress for a while.
And during that time, we maybe understand something else a little better. Gradually, know, they all all these things influence each other and we gain a stronger and a clearer perception of where we are. Maybe it’s bit like putting up a tent. You know, you put up a stay at one end and then stay at the other end and maybe a pole there and you keep on adjusting everything until, you know, it finally stands there. Yeah, you it takes time and you’ve got to keep on assessing, you know, where we stand as individuals.
It’s often very difficult for ourselves to understand where we where we are. That’s where having a teacher is important. Someone that can who understands ourselves better than we do so that we can get their opinion on what we should do. Often we don’t really understand what we need at a particular time. Anyway, I think we can leave it there.
I wish to thank everyone for coming, and I’ve enjoyed very much being here. I feel very privileged to meet everyone here on the course, and I really hope, you know, everyone’s practice goes very well and, you know, people are able to develop develop, you know, in time. Slowly, slowly, step by step. It’s a long certainly a long it’s a long course. We should have a lot of patience because we can’t develop quickly, you know, we take time to progress.
But with a lot of patience, then it gets us over the rough bits. And, yeah, I wish everyone well, also wanna thank the center for making the facilities available.