Audio recorded at Tibetan Buddhist Institute, Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Kyabje Rinpoche offers a 134-minute guide to generating bodhicitta—the awakening heart, the aspiration to lead all beings to enlightenment. He establishes a fourfold meditation: recognizing all beings across endless past lives as one’s mothers, recollecting their kindness, generating the wish to repay that debt, and cultivating the profound love and compassion arising from genuine connection. Using the image of a mother’s anguish for her only child—so acute she cannot eat or sleep—as the emotional standard to extend to all beings, he walks through both conceptual framework and practical meditation instruction. The session concludes with Q&A addressing why Buddha Śākyamūni stands supreme among Buddhas, how understanding one’s own suffering deepens compassion for others, and the paradox that focusing entirely on others’ welfare is the surest path to one’s own freedom.
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File: Line in 0092 3.mp3
UUID: 501ee052-183a-4e75-a100-a592dfdeb992
Teacher: Kyabje Rinpoche
Collection: Awakening Heart
Recorded at: Tibetan Buddhist Institute, Adelaide
Words: ~5,059
So generally speaking, at the time of listening and explaining dharma, it is important to have a good mind. And this good mind is of benefit both for oneself and for others in as much as it enables us to accumulate large collections of merit. Therefore, please try to generate such a mind. So as Ārya Maitreya in Tibetan Paktpa Jampa said in his famous treatise Abhisamayālamkāra, the generating the mind, in other words, bodhicitta, is for the sake of beings striving for full enlightenment. So this famous quote can be glossed as follows.
The term mind in generating the mind here refers to that infinitely vast mind whose object is all sentient beings, countless sentient beings as vast as space. And the motivation is to place in these these beings in a state bereft of suffering and endowed not just with ordinary happiness, but with supreme happiness, then striving with such a mind to attain full enlightenment has to be the goal of our practice. And we should practice in this way until we gain definite ascertainment of Mahāyāna practice and practice in keeping with the famous quote at the end of Je Tsongkhapa song of realizations. At the beginning, I listened to many teachings. In the in the middle, all teachings dawned upon my mind as oral instructions.
And in the end, I practiced day and night. I meditated day and night. Therefore, keeping this in mind, Rinpoche would like us to spend a couple of minutes generating this powerful motivation. Page one. One b, refuge and bodhicitta for teachings.
And if you’re not familiar with the Tibetan phonetic, and it’s English on the right side, you can read through. Page five. Mandala offering verse six. We do the first and the last verse. So to generate the mind which is striving for the welfare of others, it is necessary to give rise to the causes of this mind.
Generally, the practices we are engaged in can can be divided into two broad
Groups. The four causes of the mind, which is striving for the welfare of others, which are recognizing others as mothers, recollecting their kindness, generating the wish to repay this kindness, and the mind which delights in that. And the three results, which are minds which are striving for the welfare of others, which are, among others, love, compassion, and the peerless motivation. And as the quote which Rinpoche mentioned previously has it, the root of this is great compassion. This means that the root of the generation of bodhicitta is that mind of great compassion, which in turn arises from the love for others.
And that in turn is generated on the basis of three of the four causes mentioned previously, which are the recognition of other beings as mother sentient beings, the recollection of their kindness, and the wish to repay their kindness. On the basis of our understanding of the gradual process of generation of these states of mind, it it becomes necessary for us to meditate on them, to get a feeling for them. And once we get a good feeling for them, then we will indeed progress in our practice. We are, if you want, Rinpoche says, in the situation of someone who has heard that momos are very tasty things. And he’s never tasted momos, but he thinks to himself momos must be nice.
But then if he never goes about to tasting them, he’ll have no experience. So we have to actually taste them. We have to meditate to gain experience in the practice. So bodhicitta is an absolutely fundamental mind, and it would be extraordinary if we were able to generate it. But even if that is not the case, if we are nonetheless able to implant karmic imprints within our minds, which familiarize us with this mind, that will nonetheless be remarkable.
And therefore, we should try to do this. And therefore, the beginning of our practice at this level is to see all beings as friends. And if we can do this, that is a very good beginning. This means to see all beings as pleasing as opposed to enemies or people we find hostile, whom we see as displeasing. And then this feeling of friendship towards all beings must be enhanced.
Now our closest friend, the person we are closest to in this worldly existence is our mother. Nobody has shown to us the level of kindness our mother has shown to us. So we progress upwards from seeing all beings as friends towards moving to seeing all beings as our mothers. And to do this, we have to recollect the kindness our mothers have shown to us in this life. As said, all of these world since all of these worlds were my mothers, and the term worlds in this context refers to beings, to sentient beings.
Likewise, we have to see all beings as our mother and then recollect just how much our mother did for us. She bore her bore us in her womb, went tremendous underwent tremendous pain and discomfort to give birth to us, suckled us, then raised us, cleansed us, and we were the most precious person in the world for her. So for this reason, when we see our mother, we have a natural feeling of happiness and joy, and this is what we have to extend to all beings. Then we have to reflect on the fact that if we look backwards at the cycle of lives, we cannot find a beginning to the number of lives in our past. We have gone from life to life to life to life, and this is a beginningless process.
There is no first point in this process. In all of these lives, we have had mothers. So we can say that the number of mothers themselves is beginningless. If we reflect, we can also say that because there are not only beginningless past lives, but also if we don’t put an end to the cycle of lives, there will also be beginningless future lives. We will have countless mothers in the future as well.
And for that matter, if we reflect carefully, we will see that there is not a single place where we were not born, and there is not a single place where we have not been, nor is there for that matter a single being which has never been our mother. And therefore, we should reflect first on the kindness our mother in this very life has shown us. And then after this, through reflecting on the fact that there are countless sentient beings and every single sentient being has been our mother in one past life, not once but many times, then we should extend the feeling of gratitude we feel towards our mother in this life to all sentient beings from the past because it would be profoundly vile and base after receiving such kindness from beings not to repay this kindness back. There are many quotes in Sūtra which say that the number of our mothers is as vast as Mount Meru or that the amount of milk we have drunk from our mothers is greater than the oceans.
Said in a famous quote, our relatives are sinking to the bottom of the oceans, vast as the earth are they. This quote refers to this example refers to the fact that it was traditionally thought that in some oceans, there were huge whirlpools and that beings would be sucked in these whirlpools and sink to the very bottom of the ocean. And these beings are compared in number to the earth because they are countless in number in the same way as the earth is countless in its dimension. So to let beings which are connected to us, who are our relatives, sink to the bottom of the ocean floor is profoundly base and vile behavior. It can only arise when we ourselves are oblivious to the fact that these beings are close to us, that we are related to them.
It is only in that case that we would let them drown or suffer in such a way. Therefore, all behavior which focuses on our own liberation without any focus on the liberation of other beings must be seen as a very base, very vile, very ignorant type of behavior, which does not understand that all beings have been our mothers in many past lives. If we reflect on the fact that there is not a single hell being, there is not a single preta, there is not a single animal who has not been our mother, and we reflect on the tremendous sufferings they undergo, we should have a profound desire to help them. And we should reflect on the fact that the sufferings they are undergoing are sufferings which we ourselves will undergo because we have accumulated the non virtuous karmic imprints to experience these sufferings in the hell realms as pretas or as animals. Very, very good.
Very, very good. And then how should we respond in kind? What should be our standard or our line of conduct towards beings which have been so kind to us? We should repay them in kind. So we should pay back their kindness in the same terms they have extended it to us.
They have given us clothing when we were cold, and therefore, we should give them clothing when they are cold. They have given us medicine as our mothers when we were ill, and we should give medicine to them when they are ill. They have given us drink when we were thirsty. They have given us food when we were hungry. They have helped us in all ways, and we should extend the same kindness back to them.
However, if we analyze, we will find that we will only be able to do this occasionally or incidentally. We will not meet all sentient beings, and this help we extend is only contingent help for the incidental sufferings they experience. And then if we look into things carefully, we will see that the true profound help we can extend to them is to free them of the source of all their sufferings, which is karma and klesha, and to place them in a state of definite liberation, which is a state which is bereft of all suffering and endowed with all happiness. As I said in the essence of nectar, the kindness of one and the other can only be repaid through liberating from karma and klesha. So this is the way we can ultimately repay the kindness of all mother sentient beings.
And what should we therefore give to beings? The highest giving we can do is to give to those who are, to the miserly, that practice of the perfection of giving to the those whose morality has decayed, pure morality, to the wrathful and angry ones, the practice of patience, and to the ignorant, the practice of wisdom. There is no higher giving than such giving to help those who are striving for to attain a state of liberation, and if we have the capacity to do so, to place all sentient beings without exception in a state of full enlightenment. These are the practices we should engage in to repay the kindness of others. It is important for us to understand that it is through helping others that we help ourselves.
And if we strive just for our own benefit, then we will not attain the ultimate goal. Whereas if we strive for the benefit of others, if we strive to help others, then not only will we help others, but we will also help ourselves. We will have accomplished both goals. The Buddhas, for instance, work endlessly only for the welfare of others, and they have trained in this and in dependence on this have attained in the past a state of full enlightenment. This is what we should do.
So Rinpoche says we should all reflect on the fact that we are not born from a process of spontaneous generation like grass or trees. We have arisen through the kindness of our parents and are in existence. Thanks to the kindness of our mother. We owe everything, therefore, to our parents and specifically to our mother. Now there are some extremely deluded and, Rinpoche said, very stupid people who see their own mother as their enemy.
It is hard to believe that people who are that deluded and that confused exist, but they do. And it is very important to understand in this respect that any thoughts accumulated with respect to one’s mother especially, to one’s parents in general, are incredibly heavy karmic thoughts because these are the kindest worldly beings to us. Specifically, the deed of killing one’s parents is a deed of immediate retribution. What is meant by this is that when a being kills his parents, then he will fall immediately after this life like a stone straight down to the hell realms. And this is something which the Buddha’s Buddha himself claimed to have seen at Bodh Gaya.
So it is very important for us to understand that beings such as our parents, the Buddhas themselves, bodhisattvas, the arhats, for that matter, our gurus, our teachers, are beings which are extremely heavy karmically, and it is very important that we have irreproachable behavior with respect to them. Specifically, the prayers of our parents for ourselves are very powerful prayers. They are among the most powerful prayers there are. If our parents pray that we do well in our Dharma practice, this is about as powerful a prayer as we can have. Likewise, the prayers for children, for their parents are very powerful prayers.
So we should therefore aspire to place all beings who have been as parents to us in a state of ultimate liberation, a state of full enlightenment, and reflect again and again on the three first causes in the process of generation of bodhicitta, which is recollecting the kindness of all mother sentient beings. First, excuse me, becoming aware that all beings are one’s mother. Secondly, recollecting their kindness. And third, generating the wish to repay their kindness, and then through meditating on this, give rise to that love which desires to make them happy, to please them. It is very important for us to understand that the way our ordinary mind functions is that we find the suffering of our friends and those who are close to us insupportable.
And we delight in the suffering of our enemies. We actually would like them to suffer even more. It’s really a very evil way of thinking. And as for people who are neither friends nor enemies to us, we see them like stones. We couldn’t care less whether they suffer or not.
Now we have to get rid of this very negative outlook, which divides people into those who are pleasing to us and those who are not. And therefore, the three first causes, which are recognizing all beings as mothers, remembering their kindness and wishing to repay their kindness, all act as causes for the generation of the fourth stage of the process of generation of bodhicitta, which is that love which aspires to please others. Now this love in turn has three levels of intensity. It can be greater, middling, or smaller. If it is of the two lower levels of intensity, in other words, if it is middling or smaller, then this love will not bear, generally speaking, that one’s friends should endure suffering, that those who are close to us should endure suffering.
However, if it is the highest level of love, it will actually not be able to stand that they endure even the slightest level of suffering. And this is what we should strive to generate within our mind stream. To give an example, Rinpoche says, imagine a mother who has only one child. She has never been able to have another. And this one child is as it were the pearl of her eyes.
This child, when he suffers from a disease or an accident or whatever, elicits tremendous feelings of pain and anguish in his mother. His mother cannot swallow food at the thought of her only child suffering. She cannot drink. She cannot sleep. Her mind is totally distraught with worry.
This is a level of intensity of love we should try to generate.
And therefore, the three first causes, in the process of generation of bodhicitta, recognizing all beings as mothers, recollecting their kindness, and wishing to repay their kindness act as a cause for the fourth level of the process of development of bodhicitta, which is that mind of love, which wishes to benefit all beings. And this in turn acts as a cause for the fifth stage, which is the mind of great compassion. Now Rinpoche said, just as he made a division in the mind of love, which wishes to benefit others in the greater middling and small states of love. Likewise, there is a threefold division of hatred, unfortunately. There is great hatred, middling, and lower hatred.
And a mind of great hatred, of great animosity, which is obviously an extraordinarily evil mind, is one which wishes for beings to suffer uninterruptedly in opposition to the mind of great love, the greatest level of the mind of love, which cannot stand even one instant of suffering in the minds of beings. And then continuing with our analysis of the process of generation of bodhicitta, using as a basis or an object of visualization, beings which are bereft of happiness, Generally speaking, happiness in general, not merely contingent happiness, but also that ultimate happiness which is a state of being bereft of suffering and of non contaminated bliss. Using such beings as a basis, we must then generate within our mind stream great compassion for them thinking, how is it that such beings are bereft of happiness and the causes of happiness? It is inappropriate. It is unseemly that they be bereft of happinesses and the causes of happiness.
I actually will place them in such a state of happiness endowed with the causes of happiness. And then in dependence on generating such a mind move upwards towards generating the mind of bodhicitta, which aims to place beings in a state of ultimate happiness. Now meditating on this merely for five minutes is of tremendous benefit. It is said that, at the base of a tree to the east of our continent, there is a large assembly of bhiksus, which has been meditating for years and months on generating loving compassion, love, and bodhicitta. And yet to meditate on the generation of love, compassion, and bodhicitta in this continent of Jambudvipa of ours for a mere five minutes is actually more beneficial than the meditations of these pious monks for months and years.
The reason for this is that those who meditate on the generation of love, of great compassion, and of bodhicitta in our continent are so rare, and this rarity increases the merit which we accrue. Likewise, it is said that merely preserving stainless morality for one instant, one minute in this degenerate time of ours is superior to protecting pure morality at the time of the Buddha, and protecting pure morality for one day is far superior. This is because at the time of the Buddha, the practice of pure morality due to his teachings was very widespread. And there is a quote in Sūtra Rinpoche would like to conclude with, which says, making vast and countless offerings of food or for that matter, offering everyday precious woods and incense to the Buddha does not begin to equal the merit accrued through meditating on love. So as I said in the Samadhiraja Sūtra, which is, as you know, one of the fundamental sutras the Buddha taught, offering for countless eons an amount of jewels equal to the sand of the Ganges River is nothing in comparison to meditating on that love which wishes to satisfy all beings.
And Rinpoche says the meaning of this quote is that it underlines the great importance of meditating on love for beings. Because in dependence on this, we can attain a vast collection of merit and eventually reach the state where we are able to place beings in a state of uncontaminated happiness, a state of happiness which is that state of ultimate liberation. And therefore, we should generate the wishes within our mind, thinking first how inappropriate it is that beings are not endowed with that state. They must be endowed with that state, and I actually will do so. Very good.
So Rinpoche says, since we have a little bit of time, he would like to answer some questions which have been asked. And the reason for answering questions has to be understood. One attends Dharma teachings, one listens to Dharma teachings with, as a purpose, understanding the Dharma. That is why we come. If we don’t understand, there’s absolutely no point to come.
And then one understands the Dharma to put it in practice through meditation. So if one does not practice and one does not meditate, there will have been no point in understanding the Dharma. And it is a little bit the same thing as a meal. We cook a meal to eat it. So if we cook a meal and don’t eat it, it’s totally irrelevant.
But if we eat it, it will fill our stomach, and then we can engage in whatever activities we should do. So as Rinpoche says, this is very, very good.
Everything I know is. So the question is it, how is it that of all the Buddhists who are equal in their attainments, Buddha Śākyamūni was considered supreme? And Rinpoche says, this goes back to an account of the past life of the Buddha. A wheel turning king had 1,000 sons, and there was constant bickering and fighting between the young princes. And, eventually, to try to increase the merit of the family, all decided to make strong prayers.
So the king himself had a very small mind, and he prayed to be reborn as Brahma or as Indra. And sages said to him, your prayers are very limited in scope, you know, because you have been Brahma and Indra many times in the past. And then he and several of his sons then, after reflecting upon this, made prayers to be reborn in Sukhāvati, the paradise of Buddha Amitābha in the West, thinking there is only bliss in the pure land of the Buddhas and no suffering. So this should be a good place to be reborn. And then of the other sons, 100 made different prayers to be reborn here and to be reborn there, helping beings and benefiting beings of different parts of the universe.
But the last one of them with a very acute sense of the sufferings of our present degenerate age, made powerful prayers 500 times in a row to be reborn in this degenerate age of ours to help beings. And this prince who made these powerful prayers was the previous incarnation of Buddha Śākyamūni. For this reason, he is said to be supreme for us. And this is why he was called the white lotus from among the 1,000 Buddhas because his courage and his patience were supreme from among the 1,000 Buddhas of our age. The second question is in the context of bodhicitta, how important is it to have a clear understanding of what suffering is in order to develop compassion?
So Rinpoche says, in the process of training on the levels of the practitioner of the small and middling scope, we reflect again and again upon our own suffering and generate the wish to be freed from it first at a contingent and then at an ultimate level. However, it is through becoming aware of the fact that all beings are our mother sentient beings, that we can extrapolate our own feeling of suffering, our own dissatisfaction, our own predicament to them, and generate the wish not merely to free ourselves, but putting ourselves aside to free all other beings from suffering and the causes of suffering and to place them in a state of ultimate happiness. So it is through our own experience of suffering that we can understand the suffering of others. So when Bodhisattva pray to free all sentient beings from suffering, they also pray to be themselves freed from suffering. If they had no awareness of their own suffering, then their prayers to free all beings from suffering would be meaningless.
It would be mere speech. And therefore, this awareness of our own suffering is very important at the level of our practice as beings of the small and middling scope. And then in dependence on this awareness of our own suffering, we then reflect on the fact that other countless beings which have been our mothers are suffering, and we forget ourselves and focus on their own welfare. And in so doing, we are able not merely to attain the state of liberation, but to proceed onwards to a state of full enlightenment. So says if you have any other questions, he will be happy to answer them.
So says, your minds are blown. Okay. The suffering of a mother for her only child who is in pain is a simile which is given for the suffering bodhisattvas experience for beings. Now this suffering of the mother for her only child is not a suffering which arises from causes within the mother. It is a suffering which is dependent on the suffering of the child.
It is a suffering of empathy. And the suffering bodhisattvas have for beings are sufferings which arise of the out of the tremendous empathy for beings. Bodhisattvas do not care in the slightest about their own suffering. They are not focusing on freeing themselves of their own suffering. Their only focus is freeing other beings from their sufferings.
And in the process, if suffering arises in their own mind, so be it. So says, the greatness of the repeated meditation on great compassion is that it eventually leads us to the state where we become Bodhisattvas, children of the victorious one. And the children of the victorious one, the Bodhisattvas, are not in the slightest concerned about their own suffering. They actually couldn’t care less whether they are happy or unhappy. They do not observe this.
They just throw it out as it were. They are completely concerned with the suffering of others. And in the process, they accumulate a gigantic amount of merit which enables them to benefit others ultimately and to clear their own mind in the process from all suffering.
Which he says, we do not, and cannot understand this, but clearing, eliminating the sufferings of others is the supreme means for eliminating our own sufferings. Placing others in a state of supreme happiness is a supreme means for placing ourselves in a state of supreme happiness. And therefore, being indifferent to our own state of happiness or suffering, thinking only of others, thinking only of clearing them from of eliminating suffering in their minds and establishing them in a state of happiness is the supreme means for us to obtain happiness and to free our minds of all sufferings. So says, you see, all of you want to be happy. And because you want to be happy, you will never be happy.
You’re trying very hard, and there is this mind which is aspiring to its own benefit. That egotistical mind. That egotistical mind means that however hard you try, you can never progress beyond the level of an arhat. An arhat because he is focused only because he’s focused only on his own welfare, irrespective of how much effort he puts in his practice, can never move beyond the level of an arhat. In other words, he can neither accomplish his own welfare because he has not attained full enlightenment nor the welfare of others because he’s of no benefit to others.
His focus has been completely egotistical. So if we want to attain our own happiness, we must abandon any thought of our own happiness and focus ourselves exclusively on the happiness of others. And through focusing ourselves exclusively on the happiness of others, abandoning all thoughts about our own happiness, we will attain our own happiness through not trying to get it. And through focusing ourselves exclusively on freeing others of suffering, we will free ourselves of all sufferings. So this is how we should practice.
So remember, says this. Therefore, through thinking of ourselves, there is no full enlightenment. There is no state of full enlightenment. There is, for that matter, no great compassion. There is perhaps a state of liberation.
And therefore, we have excluded everything from our practice. So our focus has to be instead really on thinking of the well-being of others. And we will leave it here because we are past the hour. Okay. Verse nine.
I have I have to take room with you in room. I have only few announcement. This next Wednesday is twenty fifth, which is the lunar calendar Tibetan New Year. And in a program, actually, it says no teaching. But now Rinpoche changed his mind he will teach on next Wednesday.
And in the morning, we have Guru Puja, short Guru Puja, and making offering for Rinpoche as a traditional way to to celebrate for New Year and most welcome. And because in a Tibetan exile government who mentioned that please, not engaging any other, you know, social activities like singing, dancing, partying, etcetera. But we actually, we don’t normally party. But, however, it says that we’re not teaching on that night on our in our calendar. But now Rinpoche is he’s willing he he will engage and teach on a Wednesday night and the same as usual.
And the twenty eighth is a compassion day with the Venerable Jampa Tenzin. And if you would like to join, please welcome. And his facility charge is $10. And that’s all I have to announce. Thank you.