Audio recorded at Tibetan Buddhist Institute, Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this two-hour-plus teaching on the Three Principal Aspects of the Path, Kyabje Rinpoche centers on the interchange of self and others—a transformative practice Tibetan masters have valued above all other methods for generating bodhicitta. He explains why this approach (replacing self-cherishing with genuine care for others) generates extraordinarily powerful bodhicitta and leads far more rapidly to enlightenment than the gentler sevenfold cause-and-effect method. Drawing on Śāntideva, Buddha’s own path, and vivid examples—wish-fulfilling gems, parents’ protective love, the gift of enemies teaching patience—Rinpoche shows practitioners exactly what this practice means: not relocating others and self in space, but radically revaluing what truly matters. For practitioners with solid Buddhist background.
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File: Line in 0098 3.mp3
UUID: 10732c7a-f3a8-4606-9ad5-311ba8f4c2da
Teacher: Kyabje Rinpoche
Collection: Awakening Heart
Recorded at: Tibetan Buddhist Institute, Adelaide
Words: ~5,128
So to listen and to explain Dharma, it is important to generate a good motivation. This is a motivation to benefit others. And with such a motivation, then we will obtain good results from our practice, we will accumulate merit and we ourselves will benefit. So please generate the motivation. I wish to attain the state of full enlightenment, the state of the perfection all qualities in the elimination of all faults without exception for the benefit of all mother sentient beings as vast as space.
And to do this, I will listen to these teachings on the Three Principal Aspects of the Path, which are the very essence of the great vehicle. Good. Page one, refuge in bodhicitta for teaching on one b. On page five, Mandala offering. We will start only first and the last verse.
Yeah. And then
As Śāntideva said, all the happiness in this world comes from others and all suffering comes from ourselves. Now Rinpoche says that in general the term world here refers both to the container and to the essence. The container is a physical environment which is inanimate. The essence of the beings which live in this physical environment which are animate or sentient beings. Now it is the essence which can experience feelings of happiness or unhappiness.
The environment itself obviously has no sensation of feelings. And this is something we can see with our own eyes. If for instance, we observe those who are looking or who are striving for their own peace, their own relief, their own happiness, who are obsessed as it were with this, some strive for this in this very life, Others have a slightly broader scope and strive for their own happiness, their own peace in future lives. But those who engage in this striving for their own happiness, for their own peace are beings who are incapable of engaging in the practice of interchange of self and others. They are incapable of placing others above themselves.
They are beings of a very narrow and small scope with a very narrow and limited mind. And their result, therefore, the result they can hope to attain is very, very limited. The Buddha himself, Buddha Śākyamūni, was like us at the beginning. He was just an ordinary sentient being. But then he met a spiritual teacher, engaged in practices first of the small, then of the great vehicle, and ultimately practice the very essence of the great vehicle, which is those sets of practices of interchange of self and others.
And in dependence on this, he attained the state of full enlightenment, a state endowed with diverse qualities and bereft of all faults. Those who are, however, striving for peace, relief, and happiness for their own sake do not understand this. They think only of themselves. They want only to eliminate their own limited and contingent suffering, and they want to attain their own limited and contingent happiness. in dependence on this, they have been cycling endlessly in samsaric existence.
Their samsaric existence, samsaric existence in general, has no beginning. So if we analyze clearly and carefully, we will see that this behavior we have all been engaging in has absolutely no benefit. There is no advantage in engaging in this at all, let alone that in dependence on this behavior we have been accumulating a very large amount of non virtue, huge amounts of non virtue, which have led us to reincarnate from life to life. The Buddha, on the other hand, through practicing the interchange of self and others, has not only freed himself from lower rebirth, but has also freed himself from samsaric existence and has, for that matter, attained full enlightenment. Now if we want to generate within our mind stream, as I mentioned previously, there are two broad modes of instruction.
The first is a sevenfold cause and effect. And the second is interchange of self and others. Generally speaking, both enable one to generate bodhicitta within our mind stream. However, the sevenfold cause and effect generates a bodhicitta which is less powerful than the bodhicitta generated through the interchange of self and others. Not only is the bodhicitta generated in the sevenfold cause and effect process less powerful, but love in general, the specific love called maitri, bodhicitta itself are less powerful.
And therefore, because bodhicitta generated in the process is less powerful, it takes much longer to attain the state of full enlightenment. On the other hand, through the practice of the interchange of self and others and through cognate practices such as a practice of giving and taking, Tonglen, it is possible to generate a bodhicitta which is different from others. This is a bodhicitta which is extraordinarily powerful. And in dependence on this, it is possible to attain rapidly full enlightenment, for enlightenment is closer. For this reason, the so called Kadampa Geshe of ancient Tibet made this practice of the interchange of self and others their foremost practice.
So generally speaking, both these sets of instructions interchange of self and others and the sevenfold cause and effect come from the Buddha themselves. However, the interchange of self and others was specifically transmitted to Ārya Nāgārjuna by Mañjuśrī and has this uncommon lineage of transmission. Whereas the lineage of the seven fold cause and effect seems to have been transmitted mainly from Buddha via Maitreya onwards. The result we obtain is obviously contingent on the force of our activities or actually the force with which we grasp things. So if we have a lot of force in the activities we engage in, what we hold, and therefore if we have in this context a lot of force in our motivation, we will achieve great things and great goals.
On the other hand, clearly, if we are of limited enthusiasm and our motivation is weak, then what we can attain is very limited. And this reflects on these two sets of of instructions. So the first set was clearly intended for those of very sharp faculties. Member member.
So Rinpoche explained last time quite clearly the thoughts of self-cherishing, which he compared, which is compared actually by Lama Chöpa to a pandemic, an epidemic, the worst type of disease, a disease you actually can never recover from, which we fear so much. And once we are held enthralled by such a disease, once we are contaminated with it, then we engage in the practices of the 10 non-virtues and all of the different non-virtues. And this in turn leads us to rebirth in the lower realms. So this is something which we have to abandon. And even at the worldly level, worldly mundane beings consider one who is devoured by self-cherishing as a lustful person, a person filled with desires and someone of which even at the worldly level, we will say, you can’t count on him.
You know, he’s obsessed with material things and self interest. So even at the worldly level, self-cherishing is rejected. Now the advantages of cherishing others should be obvious. It is in dependence on cherishing others that Buddhas have attained full enlightenment. This is the main practice of Bodhisattvas.
And for that matter, in this respect, both worldly beings and Dharma practitioner, both the world and Dharma agree. Both appreciate those who engage in cherishing others and those who place others above themselves. Both see the advantages of this and the practice of placing others above oneself of cherishing others leads therefore to benefit not merely for oneself, but also for others. Now when we speak in the Buddhist teachings of the lower vehicle, we speak of the lower vehicle as lower because it’s a vehicle whose practitioners rely mainly on self-cherishing. The vehicle is said to be lower because the motivation is lower, because the practice is lower, and because the attainment is lower.
On the other hand, the practices of the great vehicle are said to be greater because the motivation is greater, because the practices are greater, and because the attainment is greater. The basis of the practice of the great vehicle is those sentient beings as vast as space greater than which there is not. So the basis is infinite. And in dependence on this, a an infinite motivation is generated which leads to a very vast basis, practice and result. So these are the advantages of the practice of the great vehicle.
Now, generally, there are two types of deeds. Deeds which are vast, and deeds, the Tibetan term is like waves, are almost oceanic in their importance. And we can understand the distinction between these two when we reflect at the activity of industrial machines, for instance. Industrial machines can perform very vast activities. They can produce a lot, but they can also produce in gigantic amounts and very quickly.
So this is the uncommon feature of the interchange of self and others as a means of generating bodhicitta. If we reflect on, generally speaking, the interchange of self and others and the reasons for which bodhisattvas value it, taking an example from daily life. Why do parents cherish their children? Parents have this profound love for their children. But if we analyze to understand exactly where this love comes from, we will find that the principal reason seems to be that they love their child because a child is born from their body, from their flesh.
And to put it bluntly, they love their child simply because it’s a part of their body, a part of themselves. So this is a very weak reason for valuing or loving someone. Now bodhisattvas do not have this sort of relationship to sentient beings. They do not love sentient beings in this very possessive and somewhat childish way. They love sentient beings because they see sentient beings as the most beneficial and the most valuable things there are.
They see them as as valuable as their own lives. Now if we were to take, for instance, the example of some very avaricious persons, there are some people who are hugely wealthy and yet they cling to wealth as much or more than their own lives. Others are not like that, but many are like that. So what does this come from? This comes from the fact that they see their wealth as the most useful and valuable thing for them.
Bodhisattvas on the other hand see sentient beings as the most valuable and useful things. They see them as more valuable than a wish fulfilling gem. In days of yore, there was this strange object called a wish fulfilling gem, something akin to Aladdin’s lamp in our culture from which one could obtain anything one wanted in this life. One could eliminate all sufferings in this life and gain all happiness, but it only applied to this life. On the other hand, Bodhisattvas see sentient beings as more valuable than this wish fulfilling gem or this Aladdin’s lamp because on the basis of sentient beings, they can eliminate all sufferings not only in this life, but in all future lives.
And if we reflect on the meaning of the word other in the expression cherishing others, The term other here refers to sentient beings. It refers to mother sentient beings. There is this verse in Lama Chopa which reads, understanding that that mind which cherishes mothers is the door of infinite qualities, Bless me to cherish more than my life those beings who act against me even if they are enemies. Now, this is a very profound verse. It is very profound because which he was explaining these beings are to be cherished more than wish fulfilling gems.
It’s also very profound because that very first line in Tibetan, ma nam. The term nam here is a pluralizer. It’s a plural. That one syllable refers to the fact that these mothers, ma, are not one. They are infinite, infinite as space.
And they this mind which cherish cherishes them is therefore the extraordinarily precious mind we have to generate. If we if we reflect carefully on our lives, we will see that everything we have, our human body, the clothing we wear, the houses we have bought or we rent, all of these arise exclusively through the kindness of others. They do not arise through our own efforts, but from others. For that matter, all the realizations of the practitioners of the lower vehicle arise also through the kindness of sentient beings.
And therefore, when this verse refers in Lama Chopa to generating loving compassion for our mothers, it is important to understand that this practice of loving compassion can lead us both to temporary and to ultimate ultimate happiness. And the very term loving compassion here refers to that activity of placing these mother sentient beings in a state of happiness. Now the verse in Lama Chopa continues. When I understand that it is the door of all of the infinite qualities, the term infinite here refers to the fact that this very practice of cherishing mother sentient beings is actually the gateway to every single quality we might hope to develop within our mind stream. And the activity of placing beings in a state of happiness is what we should engage in.
In as much as all of us want happiness, we need happiness, then all of us need this mind which cherishes others because it is in dependence on this that our happiness arises. Our temporary and ultimate happiness arise in dependence on causes and conditions. If the causes and conditions are created, then we will obtain it. If they are not created, we have no hope of obtaining it. The cause for this is once again that mind which cherishes other.
So if we want a state of happiness which is infinite, which is all the possible sources of enjoyment, then our main practice has to be the practice of cherish cherishing others. The verse in Lama Chopa continues stating, even if these beings were to rise against me as my enemies, bless me to cherish them more than my very life. It is very important here to understand that all of us attach far too much importance to our life. Our life is only meaningful. This life of ours is only meaningful if it is used to practice virtue.
Then our life is meaningful and relevant. Otherwise, if our life is spent engaging in non-virtue, harming others, then the great lamas of old would actually pray that the life of such a being be shortened, be abridged, be cut short because such a life was not helpful for that person. Someone with a very long life who spends that life accumulating non virtue just creates a huge amount of causes for being reborn in the lower realm. And the great beings of all who had this capacity through compassion would do whatever was necessary to abridge such lives. On the other hand, if we are engaged in the practice of virtue and are accumulating merit, then one should aspire to as long life as possible because such a life is indeed beneficial.
Bodhisattvas therefore value sentient beings more than they value their own lives, far more for that matters. They will happily give up their life and body for the benefit of sentient beings. For that matter, if beings become our enemies, this is actually very beneficial for us. It enables us to practice patience. Without anger, Rinpoche says, there is no practice of patience.
If we have had very kind and loving parents who never gave us a status cause for irritation, how on earth could we hope to practice patience? We must realize that the Buddha has actualized, has perfected all six perfections. The perfection of giving, of morality, of energy, of patience, of meditation, and of wisdom. Now if we look around us, we will see that there are many people who practice generosity. Generosity is a very popular practice.
On the other hand, the practitioners of patience are few and far between. They are very rare. Rinpoche recounts the anecdote of Atisha who was accompanied by one of his students, a certain Atsara, who was an extremely unpleasant person who was always getting angry and blowing up. And other disciples of Atisha suggested to him to just get rid of this extremely volatile person. And Atisha said, by no means, what a marvelous person he is.
Thanks to him, I can practice patience every day.
So there are two types of love which find others pleasing. The love which finds other pleasing generated within the context of the sevenfold cause and effect instruction, which follows the three initial trainings, recollection of all sentient beings as a mother, recollection of their kindness, and the wish to repay their kindness, and the love which finds others pleasing generated within the context of the practice of the interchange of self and others. The love which finds others pleasing, we call just love from now on, generated in the context of the interchange of self and others is far more powerful than the love generated through the practice of the sevenfold cause and effect. It is actually called a special powerful love which arises from the recollection of the kindness of beings. It is much more powerful because all in the context of the sevenfold cause and effect training, we merely recollect the kindness of sentient beings towards us when they were our mothers.
In the context of the practice of the interchange of self and others, we recollect the kindness of all sentient beings towards us at all times throughout our lives. So this makes this practice of love in the context of the interchange of self and others far more powerful. If we reflect carefully, we will see that everything we have in this very life, we owe to the kindness of others. Obtaining this human body we have, we owe to the kindness of others. Wealth, we owe to the kindness of others.
A long life, we owe to the kindness of others. Having this physical body, we owe to the kindness of others. Having a pleasing appearance for that matter, we owe to the kindness of others. Why is this the case? We owe our wealth to the kindness of others, for instance, because it is only through the practice of generosity towards other sentient beings in past lives and towards from the practice of the abandonment of stealing that we would have created the karma to be wealthy or well off in this life.
We owe our long life to the kindness of others because it is through the practice of the abandonment of killing through renouncing, killing, or harming other sentient beings in past lives. We have a long life in this life. We owe this general body we have to the kindness of others because actually this general human body we have can only arise through practicing ethics and morality towards others and abandoning harming them. So having practiced this in past lives, we have this body in this life. For that matter, all of us have a reasonably pleasant appearance unlike some people who have very dark and angry faces.
And this is so because we practiced patience towards sentient beings in past lives and did not allow anger to arise in our mind stream. So it is through generating all these causes in our mind stream in past lives with respect to sentient beings that the results have accrued in this life. And therefore, we can say that sentient beings are the basis for our practice of morality, of patience, of generosity, and so forth. Even in this very life, if we reflect about it, we have food, we have something to drink because others make it for us. If we go to a restaurant, somebody has to make the food.
It doesn’t materialize out of thin air. And therefore, these instructions on the interchange of self and others, because they give us access to an understanding of the kindness of beings which have not been directly our fathers and mothers in this life or in any immediately preceding life are much more powerful. And it is this love which sees others as pleasing to which the stanza of Lama Chopa, which he quoted referred to in the context of the interchange of self and others. Hence, self-cherishing is to be understood as the root of all suffering we have without exception, and it can be compared to a poison. Whereas cherishing others can be understand understood as the root of all of the qualities we are aspiring to, and therefore can be compared to a medicine, the antidote to a poison.
So it is very important for us to understand this. And then we have to meditate. We have to meditate until we get the sense. This is the way it is. Once we get that sense, we must engage in the practice of the interchange of self and others.
And this practice means that instead of seeing as we have for time immemorial, self-cherishing as a friend which protects us, takes care of number one, and cherishing others as weakness which harms us, why bother with others? Instead, we must do exactly the opposite. We see self-cherishing as the enemy which harms us and cherishing others as a friend which helps us. It is in dependence on this that we should practice. Now at present, all of us only have self-cherishing within our minds.
There’s nothing else. We don’t even know the meaning of cherishing others. But thanks to the kindness of the spiritual friend, we have had an introduction to what self-cherishing means. And now the time has come for us to practice. We all say we want to be happy.
We want benefit in our lives. We all say we don’t want to suffer. Well, if that is true, then we have to understand what causes happiness and what causes suffering clearly and eliminate what causes suffering and practice what causes happiness. Śāntideva said, the root of all suffering is cherishing oneself and the root of all happiness is cherishing others, practicing interchange of self and others. What is meant here by the interchange of self and others is an interchange of the thoughts of cherishing self and cherishing others.
That doesn’t mean that we take others and put them in our place and somehow we put ourselves in their place. That is not what is meant here. What is meant is that instead of valuing self-cherishing, as we always have, and deprecating cherishing others, we do exactly the opposite. We value cherishing others and we deprecate self-cherishing.
So how to understand the practice of the interchange of self and others is best done through examining ourselves at present. If we examine our minds at present, we will find that we are obsessed with the wish not to suffer ourselves and to be happy ourselves. As far as others are concerned, we couldn’t care less. This is our present situation. We have to change this completely, transform the way we think, and we must cherish others in the same way as we cherish ourselves.
What is meant by this is that we must give great importance to the fact that others not suffer. We must attach tremendous importance to the fact that others be happy. And as far as our own happiness is concerned, not give a damn. It is just totally unimportant. Now this is how we should practice.
And for that matter, when great self-cherishing arises within our minds, this is a time when we have to practice this interchange of self and others, replacing the cherishing of ourselves with the cherishing of others. So we should therefore strive to establish the benefit of others and to eliminate all sufferings in others and abandon all preoccupation about ourselves, be totally indifferent to our own well well-being. So it’s not at all a case of putting ourselves in the place of others and putting others in our place. It is a case of changing the way we think, of replacing the self self-cherishing which lives within our mind with the cherishing of others, which is what we have to generate. Precisely because the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas have trained in this and because it is non mistaken, they have attained a state of complete happiness bereft of all suffering.
And precisely because we have been profoundly mistaken in our understanding of what causes happiness, what causes unhappiness, we have not attained the state. So we have to therefore change the way we think in the light of the way they think. Now this is obviously for those of sharp capacity of great enthusiasm. This is not easy. And which I suspect that many of us when we hear about these practices of forgetting about ourselves and valuing others above anything, will react with horror.
Well, that may be so, but after meditating, we will understand the value of this. So Rinpoche says, there are only two roads. There is the black road going down and the white road going up. At present, all of us are engaged on the black road going down. Our lives are lives of vice and non virtue.
This is a case because we have been unaware so far of the very existence of a white road which leads us upwards. What is this black road going downwards? It’s a road of ego it’s a road of egoism, the road of self-cherishing, placing oneself above others, which is, of course, source of all non virtues and of the lower rebirth. What is the road leading back upwards, the white road? It is a road which has been taught to us by Śāntideva, by Atisha, from Mañjuśrī, and by our teacher Je Tsongkhapa and Rinpoche himself.
This is a road of cherishing others more than ourselves. This is a road which leads to full enlightenment. So this is a road we have started to tread, and this is a road we have to train in. And therefore, it is very important for us to engage in careful study of these matters to understand exactly what is to be abandoned and what is to be practiced. Śāntideva said that it is through study that we are able to dispel the thoughts of the mind and Śāntideva had a profound understanding of the mind, and he understood that all the mind was indeed afflicted, all it had thoughts and defects.
It was not afflicted in its very nature. This was something which could be dispelled. And as Śāntideva said, likewise, anything becomes easier with practice. Do not abandon at once. So Rinpoche says, one could give a bit of a simile for this, an example for this.
All of us may have experienced meeting someone who is really our worst enemy. And just seeing this person or hearing their name is enough to cause the hackles to rise on our back. We can’t stand to be in the same room as this person. Then they start to behave a bit better and we start to get closer, and eventually it can happen that we will become really close friends. So close that we will not be able to stand not being with this person.
Now this occurs only through the force of habit. And therefore, can bring the force of habit in the picture to help us to develop qualities such as cherishing others more than ourselves. So the question is, what is definite ascertainment? What is the measure of definite ascertainment? And what he says, generally speaking, if we consider conceptual minds, there are many different types of conceptual minds, concordant and nonconcordant, factual or non factual conceptual minds.
Conceptual mind which, for instance, considers the aggregates to be permanent would be a non factual or mistaken conceptual mind. For that matter, it would be a wrong view. However, there are other conceptual minds which are factually concordant, those which see the aggregates as impermanent, for instance. Definite ascertainment is a conceptual mind which is born out of analysis. It is a factually concordant conceptual mind, which after analyzing, for instance, the aggregates or impermanence or phenomenon in general, I would say the aggregates are impermanent, phenomenon impermanent.
They are of the nature of emptiness. So in that respect, it is a factually concordant conceptual mind, which is similar to a pramāna, to a tsema, but is not quite a pramāna. So a definite ascertainment is not necessarily a pramāna. Every pramāna would be a definite ascertainment.
So the question is, what is the measure of self-cherishing? How does one identify self-cherishing? Says that mind which appears within us and which says, I, I, that is not self-cherishing. That is self grasping, apprehending the self as inherently existing. However, in dependence on that mind, the mind which sees ourselves as principal, as the most important, which wants us to be happy and to be free of suffering and doesn’t care about others arises.
It’s a mind which Rinpoche says actually desires itself, which lusts after its own happiness. That is self-cherishing. And that mind is totally uninterested in the welfare of others. So that ignorance which apprehends itself as inherently existing, which is an affliction, gives in turn rise to self-cherishing. You can actually translate this literally as self love.
And this self love, the self-cherishing thinks only of one’s own happiness and couldn’t care less whether this pursuit of one’s own happiness leads to suffering in others. This is self-cherishing. Okay. Page nine. Okay.
Thank you. Hello. I have a couple announcement. Okay. March 11 is a Day of Miracles, and there will be a 05:30 in the morning precept.
And 06:30, Rinpoche will give us a refuge if anybody want to take refuge. And and, of course, the Guru Puja in the evening. And Long Life Puja will be coming on the March 15. It starts on the 10:00 if you wonder what time. And if you’d like to give a hand, you know, you can ask in the office.
And other things from the announcement from Tibetan community, we will hold here a Tibetan candlelight vigil on a Tuesday night around 07:00. And we will there will be emails going around, and if you like to come and pray and help, you know, those Tibetans who’ve been in, you know, suffering for many years. And, yeah, please welcome. And that’s all at the moment.