Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 46-minute opening session, Ven Jamyang establishes proper motivation for the Buddhist path using the Four Noble Truths. He frames the dilemma: our habitual way of seeking happiness is fundamentally mistaken, the cause lies in our own mind rather than external conditions, and the remedy—Dharma study and practice—requires actual application, not mere belief. He then teaches three progressive levels of motivation to practice: creating causes for a fortunate rebirth through ethical discipline; generating determination to escape saṃsāra through the three higher trainings; and awakening the bodhisattva commitment to achieve enlightenment for all sentient beings. He emphasizes right listening—investigating teachings rigorously like testing gold, approaching with open mind, never accepting passively. For practitioners beginning a structured retreat or teaching series.
File metadata (for organising)
File: session 1 Motivation.mp3
UUID: ee73b57d-a885-48dd-87d1-61c1cece0b60
Teacher: Ven Jamyang
Collection: Presenting the Path (Ven Jamyang)
Date: 2009 (exact day not recorded)
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 46.2 minutes
Words: ~2,557
So make yourself comfortable. If you prefer to sit on a chair, the main thing is that your back is straight. You can put your hands either in your lap or on your knees or, you know, in Buddhist meditation, we put a right hand on top of the left and the thumbs slightly touching each other. And when we have that, we have the elbows a little bit away from the body. But wherever you feel that, you can just leave your hands for a long period of time.
That is what you that is where you put your hands. Your back is straight, and you can check your back from your tailbone to your lower back, the middle of your back, to your neck. Being aware that all the vertebraes are stacked on top of each other nicely so that the energy can run smoothly through our spine. Our head is a little bit bent forward. Our jaws are relaxed.
The tongue is touching the palate. And our eyes are closed and at the same time allow a little bit of light to come in. So you open them a tiny little bit so that it wakes your mind up, so that you feel that you are very aware of what you’re thinking and what you’re doing, but not more and it shouldn’t distract you from the meditation. If it is too distracting, you close your eyes. And then first of all, allow yourself to be here.
And you can do that by letting go of everything that happened in the past. Letting go all the thoughts that Letting go of any worry about the future. Just being fully present. Rejoice in the fact that you have given this day to deepen your understanding of your own mind and how we can develop the mind in a way that it becomes more beneficial for us and more beneficial for others. By doing this day, can create more causes for happiness than we could by doing a whole day shopping, even if we could buy the most beautiful things, we could never buy real happiness.
And to give a very quick summary on the Four Noble Truths, which was the first teaching of the Buddha. The essence of the Four Noble Truths is that just as a disease needs to be diagnosed, its cause eliminated, a healthy state achieved, and a remedy implemented. So also should causes of suffering, its cessation and the path be known, removed, attained and undertaken. And I will go through that a little bit slower. Slower.
So first of all, in order to change our situation, have to recognize and acknowledge that we are sick. We also have to recognize where that sickness is located. The way we are functioning at the moment, the way we are looking for happiness, the way we are trying to be free of suffering, it is we do that in a sick way. We do that in a way that we can never achieve what we want, what we do is we try to see the faults in that what we were chasing, the faults in our external environment. And by doing that, we will never be able to find what we are looking for.
So if we can recognize that the mistakes that we make are actually in our own mind, We are one step further. So the next step is to recognize that there is a cause for that sickness. There must be a cause. Because everything that arises, arises due to causes and conditions. When we remove this cause, the sickness will be healed.
Try to think about the implications of this logic. In order to remove the cause, we have to apply a remedy. And when we apply the remedy, the sickness and its cause will be eliminated. So go over this again and again until you find certainty in your mind on this. Then reflect on the analogy that the Buddha is like the doctor.
The Dharma like the medicine and the Sangha like the nurse, supporting you in taking the medicine. Without taking the medicine, no matter how much we venerate the doctor, no matter how much we love to hear him or her talking about the medicine, No matter how much we praise the medicine, as long as we don’t take the medicine, healing will not be possible. And again try to find certainty on that. As long as we don’t apply the remedy, our problems will not change. We have been suffering our illness for a very long time.
We are used to being sick. Feel even comfortable being sick. Somehow we are attached to being sick, or to our sickness. And taking the medicine and healing will therefore not be easy and sometimes painful. So in order to find the courage and the perseverance, we need Sangha.
We need practitioners like ourselves, who support us and encourage us along the way. And when we can see our own situation of being sick, needing to listen to the doctor taking the remedy. With that in mind, we start to listen to the teachings. The teachings that when we apply them becomes the remedy. So in order to hear the teachings, we try to listen with an open mind.
Listening to the teachings is listening to something that we are not familiar with. It is being open to hear something that is completely new and strange, and maybe even opposite of what we are used to think. So how do we listen with an open mind? First of all, we try not to listen as an upside down vessel, not being able to absorb anything. We also not try not to listen as a dirty vessel, which is a vessel with preconceptions and a wrong motivation.
We also try to prevent listening as a vessel with a hole in it, in which case things would go one ear in and the other out. So try to see yourself as a vessel. Generating the right listening attitude. And generate the determination that you want to keep your mind open, even if you hear things that you don’t like to hear. You do not have to accept whatever you hear.
You shouldn’t accept without investigating whatever you hear. So when you hear something that you don’t like or that you’re not familiar with, don’t just accept it. But challenge it with reasoning. Investigate it. Like you would investigate gold when you want to buy it.
You turn it over and over again. And only when it can withstand the reasoning, you will accept it. If something is in accord with reality, the more you investigate it, the clearer it will become. But if something is not in accord with reality, the more you investigate it, the more it will disappear. So that’s why we have to investigate.
So give yourself permission to do so. And then we generate a motivation for being here. Maybe it’s just for this day or for this weekend. But you can also think that the generation that we the motivation that we generate now is going to be for the rest of our life. And we regenerate that again and again.
Knowing that the motivation that we generate will determine the result of our actions. So probably your motivation is that you want to be happy. Are looking for ways to be more happy, to find better happiness, more stable happiness. But there are different kinds of happiness. And if we would not adjust our motivation at all, consciously, and just follow our instincts in wanting to find happiness, we would strive for instant happiness.
And that is the motivation driven by the eight worldly concerns. Wanting pleasure or praise, for wanting pleasure from praise and fame. Wanting to be free of pain, of blame and shame. This motivation is not a dharma motivation and only creates causes for suffering in the future. So when we try to generate a motivation that really leads to happiness, the first motivation is to cultivate, that we cultivate, is that we strive for the happiness of future lives.
We try to create the causes for a rebirth in the higher realms, in which we experience relative happiness, and in which we can meet the dharma again. In order to achieve this, we turn away from the sufferings of the lower realms and avoid engaging in the ten non virtuous actions. Make a determination that this weekend or this day, or for as long as you can, you will avoid killing, stealing, sexual misconduct, lying, divisive speech, harsh words, malicious speech and covetousness. Being reborn in a happy realm is not a guarantee for long term happiness. Because we will be reborn again and again.
And after being born in the happy realms, might actually go to the lower realms. And even if we would be born in the higher realms all the time, we would have to experience still a lot of suffering, over and over again. Again. So being tired of being born again and again, having died again and again, having gone from high to low and from low to high again and again, and realizing that this will never end by itself, we try to generate the motivation of an intermediate being. Which is wanting to be free from saṃsāra.
Wanting to be free from cyclic existence, from the wheel of life, from having to go through birth and death again and again. In order to be able to do this, we must realize that even pleasures of saṃsāra, the pleasures of cyclic existence, are in the nature of suffering. And only when we let go of our attachment to these pleasures, we can generate determination to be free of saṃsāra. We have to feel that the sufferings of Samsāra are so all pervasive. And we have to create an aversion for that in such a way that we feel as if we are in a burning house, in a prison from which we want to be free.
So our practice to achieve this will be the three higher trainings. The training of ethics, concentration and wisdom. We can train in ethics by avoiding the ten non-virtues, but also by adopting the practice of saving lives, respecting and taking care of others property, by supporting relationships, speaking truthfully, Speaking with kind words. Practicing silence, and when we do speak, we only speak meaningful words. And we try to generate thoughts of giving and goodness in our mind.
During the meditation sessions we can practice concentration, by trying to stay focused on the meditation topics as much as we can. And outside the sessions, we try to be mindful, we try to be in the present moment. And at all times we try to stay connected with reality as much as we can. Contemplating that things do not exist in the way they appear to exist. Even if we would achieve the happiness of liberation, which is a stable happiness, we would still not have completed our purpose, as we would not have removed all faults and developed all qualities.
Just as we are suffering in saṃsāra, so are all sentient beings. Beings of great capacity recognize this and fear the suffering of Samsāra for all sentient beings. If we can see that others are suffering in exactly the same as we do, Freeing ourselves from suffering would be extremely selfish. The peace and happiness of sentient beings depends completely upon us. And our happiness is only received from their kindness.
So if we would use our life to fulfill the happiness of all sentient beings, it becomes the means to achieve success and happiness for ourselves as well. Think the purpose of my life is to free all sentient beings from suffering and its causes, and to lead them not only to the happiness of self liberation, but to the peerless happiness of enlightenment as well. This is my responsibility. I am responsible for the happiness of all sentient beings. Why?
Because whether my actions are helpful or harmful to them depends completely on my own mind, on whether I have compassion or not. Think about that. Think about the sentient beings that we meet during the day and the actions that we create in relationship to them. And that only when we see their suffering, we want them to be free of suffering, and we can generate compassion for that. Our actions will be helpful.
But if we are obsessed with our own happiness, our own wish to be free of suffering. The actions that we do in relationship to these sentient beings will be harmful. And when our actions are harmful, sentient beings will experience suffering. So whether my actions are helpful or harmful depends completely on my own mind, on whether I have compassion or not. By generating compassion immediately, I therefore benefit numberless, other sentient beings.
At the very least, I do not harm them. The ultimate purpose of my life is to work perfectly for others. In order to fulfill that purpose, it is necessary for me to achieve the state of full enlightenment, the omniscient mind. And in order to do that, I must actualize the path to enlightenment. In order to do that, I engage and study and meditate on the stages of the path to enlightenment.
And I practice the six perfections. Perfection of generosity, ethics, patience, perseverance, concentration and wisdom. So while you reflect on all that information, you try to let it merge with your mind, with more subtle levels of your mind, with your heart, and you focus on that feeling. Don’t try to hold on to the words, but let the words penetrate and move your mind, and focus on that. And if this meditation has generated a certain feeling in your mind, try to stay with that feeling as much as you can.
Focus on it for as long as you can. And now we can dedicate the merits of doing this meditation by thinking. May all my actions become only causes for me to achieve enlightenment as quickly as possible. And then when we have the tea break and also during the lunch, I’m gonna suggest that we try to stay silent, that we try to stay connected with the feeling that we have generated. You don’t have to concentrate as hard as how you do it in the meditation.
You can back off a little bit. But you stay, say, for sixty, seventy percent concentrated in it. And in the break, you can just sit quietly or you can go for a little walk. And I will open the library so you can also be in there and, you know, have a look around or just sit there. And when Geshe la comes in, we normally stand up as a sign of respect, and we only sit down when the Geshe sits down.
If you feel comfortable, you can do prostrations after the Geshe, but you don’t have to. And I will ask the Geshe to have enough time after the teachings for questions. And then what we can say that we start talking when everybody has finished lunch? Okay.