Audio recorded at Tibetan Buddhist Institute, Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 48-minute Lojong (mind training) teaching, Kyabje Rinpoche develops a compassionate logic for responding to those who harm you. When people hurt you, they are driven by ignorance—defenseless as a stick in someone’s hand—so direct your response toward their delusions, not them. He explores this principle for envious friends and serious crimes alike. The core insight contrasts two paths: worldly life begins pleasantly but ends in suffering; spiritual practice begins with hardship but leads to enlightenment. Rinpoche emphasizes that difficulties on the path are rapid karma purification and openings for deeper compassion. He outlines Buddha’s practical advice—simple food, shelter, minimal clothing—to maximize practice time, then illustrates these ideas through Geshe Ben: a former thief who became so realized that sustenance arrives without seeking. The session closes with practitioners’ difficult questions on balancing compassion with responsibility and handling severe suffering in practice.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 1994-07-13 – 3B – Retreat – KR.mp3
UUID: 2186a262-3f83-45f9-986a-6c353a0fafd7
Teacher: Kyabje Rinpoche
Collection: Chenrezig
Date: 1994-07-13
Recorded at: Tibetan Buddhist Institute, Adelaide
Words: ~4,074
The defense, make a case or defense, it’s by saying that I have got no choice because I’m being used by the persons as a means as a means to bring harm harmfulness to you, then you should also defend the person who is doing that. The person is also there’s no difference whatsoever in the terms of how it’s been used. That person’s also used by the ignorance, the delusions as a means to bring a harmfulness or the hurt onto us. Therefore, we shouldn’t be getting angry in the way. We shouldn’t get angry with the stick because because the stick can’t defend itself by saying I’m being used.
So this in the same situation, same manner, the perpetrator or the person who was supposed to bring harmful to us will say I’m being also or he’s being also used by his karmic delusions. So you shouldn’t be getting angry with him, but instead, you should be getting angry with her actual driving, the string ignorant delusions. Okay. We we worked out in a reasonable sort of way of logical thinking process that a logical argument that why we why that person has a person’s there’s of no ground to accuse that person’s of his or her activities. That’s because the person’s being used, okay, by the ignorant delusions.
That’s one way of justifying of not getting angry with the persons. Right? But another way of thinking, another anger, if you look at the why there’s no reason for that person, why there’s no reason for us to get angry with that person, it’s because you must think that we have done something in our past lifetimes that that has caused that’s that has precipitated that person to act in harmful manner to us. So in actual fact, we have already made ourself target for for his or her action, retaliatory actions because we have initiated ourself. So it’s only fair It’s only fair that person, you know, take revenge onto you.
So it’s your own doing. So you should know that it’s your own doing that your own doings, your own bad karmic sort of reaction is happening to you or your own doings, the things are happening onto you. So it’s your own doing. So you has all you met your obvious target for those action by doing the, misguided or rotten things in our previous times. Excuse me.
Okay. Another Another situation, similar sort of situation. If you’ve got a lot of friends, you’ve got a lot of people amongst your companionship, whatever, whose social status or position is equal of yours or maybe a little bit under you, so the so those of your friends, those of people around you out of their out of their envy envy envious mind or out of their pride start thinking, oh, I’m equal than him. I’m better than him. And those who are a little bit down under you will think that, oh, even though he’s got a better kind of a social status or whatever, I’m still better than him.
By act by being forced by that sort of envious mind, if they happen to be, again, as we said before, said bad things about you, do bad things to you, scheme behind your back for your downfall, and all sort of rotten things, you become it become your knowledge or you come to know it. Instead of getting angry to them, instead of getting you know, working your defense mechanisms, what you should feel is, again, love and compassion, treat that person as almost like your teacher and your gurus or your spiritual friend. Again, if when sorry. When you are engaging the engaging the spiritual practice training or preparing your thought, making your mind sublime through those type of practice, obviously, you have given up, forego, or lot of, lot of pleasure and comfort and luxury of this lifetime, and you are diligently engaging in this spiritual practice at the expense of the physical comfort, at the expense of a good nutritious nutritious food if as a result of a of not result of lack of a proper nutritious intake of food, should you happen to sick of that get sick or while in the while in the journey journeying in the spiritual path, should you happen to get sick due maybe sickness problems or difficulties difficulties faced, confronted as a maybe as a result of somebody directly bringing harm onto you, hurting you physically, or you have some really bad health problems due to the due to the bad karmic karmic action we did with past evolving in the form where you’re feeling bad.
No matter whatever the problems, no matter whatever the difficulties, difficulties, sufferings that you face during your during your quest of the spiritual realization for the others, instead of instead of self pitying yourself, instead of saying, oh, there’s a lot of aches and pains, so I like to reduce my practice or I like to give up. You should be feeling more energetic, feel more happy, make your mind more lucid, more flexible, more soft, more supple by thinking that that if this is my extent of my suffering, I like to take even more, be more eager that I’ll take suffering of entirety of suffering of all other sentient beings. See? If I’m suffer like this, I’m gonna take even more. This is nothing.
I’m gonna take even more. I’m gonna take all the suffering of all other peoples, all the imaginable possible suffering, trouble, difficulties, pains, and aches, and all other people, all the other sentient beings, I’m gonna take that onto myself, and I’m gonna do even more hard work. So doing developing that sort of attitude, engaging that sort of spiritual state of mind is is the practice of those great beings. Behaviors. Yes.
So when we engage in the particularly, the initial stage of our quest for spiritual journey journey or spiritual journey or this a Dharma practice or the chos, which Rinpoche used the word chos, meaning Dharma. Right? When we practice that, you can be sure of that that almost sure of that that that practicing Dharma, practicing spiritual engaging engaging the the spiritual practice is and and the comfort, the luxury of feeling physical enjoyment are mutually exclusive. When one engages in the spiritual practice, it somehow neck of the things that one tends to get suffering, more difficulties. One tends to confront more problem, more difficulties, things of that nature, more state things are more to be hindering type thing.
But what one should realize that is as as we we developed, as we as we gradually progress in our spiritual path, what it does is it is loosening up our strong strong and strong tough state of mental mental delusion delusion, repository state of of ignorant mind is starting to get loose, which further give rise to all the bad karmas, karmic potencies we have done in our past lifetime, which without this practice, sure to get reborn in a bigger suffering in the hell realm and so forth are being now brought brought forward as a result of making this this repository, delusion, repository open up, made loose. So all the suffering, all the aches and pains that we confront is is been has been used to, how to say, used to suffice the bigger suffering, bigger problem that are waiting. See, therefore, we tend to get more more difficult and confront more problem, more difficulties. And and because of because of the the problems we face is sufficing or brought forward to the ripening of the bigger bigger bigger problems, what happens is it’s it’s it is cleaning our mind that much by that much clear. It is purging the our karmic mind that much quicker delusion of securities in in return.
Conversely, it open ups the better quality of a better quality dormant, latent quality of our mind our mind, thus eventually resulting into the into the into the complete opening of the knowledge, which is all knowingness all knowingness. Therefore therefore, I can there is not a one person, one being who has ever achieved a a state of all knowingness by by luxuriating himself or herself, by having good time, by enjoying himself or herself. There’s always gonna problems. There’s always gonna be difficulties. No one has ever achieved that state of sublime, pristine state of mind by having fun or having good time.
Like So if we were to study, take a glimpse look of even taking by a glimpse look of all the autobiography, all the historic or life account of all the great beings of the in the past, we will never find anyone where who has achieved the path easily. They all have there’s always stories of how hard, how ascetically sort of hard work they had to undergo, how what sort of strong, difficult practice, circumstance, problems, and so forth in order for them to eventually meeting their real nature of their mind. And no one has ever get got freedom from these problems by pampering themselves or herself by being becoming fat and, you know, being luxurating himself or herself. Buddha Śākyamūni has given out advice, particularly pertaining to the initial stage of our practice, initial stage of our quest for the spiritual journey. That, first of all, when we engage in the practice, the place where we live, the place where we sit is should not be kind of the prime importance thing there.
It should be just enough, bare enough that you don’t get bad, just enough to support or just enough to that you can sit on it, so to speak. That’s all you need. And in terms of your clothing, don’t need immensely, immensely kind of expensive clothes and so forth, but just to keep yourself from the cold or heat, so to speak. And in terms of your food, it’s just enough to maintain your health so that you can continue the practice. So, keeping all the things facilities to a bare minimum, will give you which will give you a lot of free time.
So you have to concentrate, use all those free times free times in order to practice and and and and be satisfied with the bare minimum facilities, and then you should concentrate more of your mental energy or your mental energy onto onto liking or yearning for the abandonment. Here, abandonment refers to the to get rid of all the yearning for the abandonment and the meditations. Okay? So abandon here refers to the to get rid of all the obscurities, ignorance that clouds that clouds our basic clear mind from seeing the things as they are, and we should we should engage engage in the total meditations, total meditation of the path that act path that leads us to the actual attainment, the complete perfect enlightenment. So this was the kind of outline initial advice the Buddha Śākyamūni has given to to the to the practitioner, particularly when they do when they start their spiritual quest.
And Buddha further said that Buddha further said that when we practice Dharma, chos, the term chos is a Tibetan word for Dharma, which which is used a lot. Chos, when you practice Dharma, it is in the beginning, it’s it’s bound to happen or it is we can’t it is unavoidable, the fact that we have to suffer when we are journeying towards that goal. However, the end result is guaranteed to be very nice, to be all knowingness, to gain the complete knowledge, complete freedom, complete happiness that can be used in order to bring about happiness for you everlasting happiness for yourself and for all other people. On the contrary, or on the other side of the coin, so to speak, if you talk about the worldly activities in the initial stage, in the beginning, we we enjoy ourself. When we engage in the worldly pleasure, we enjoy ourself, we have a good time, whatever we do seem to somehow fall into the places, and it seem to work really good for you in the beginning stage in early activities.
But as we go along, as we progress, as time passes, they’re starting to perish. They’re starting to become no good. The things start they start to become more and more suffering. Even our most cherished body, the flesh, start start to start to sag, and eventually, all we end up is nothing but a misery and utter suffering at the end, and this is the the intrinsic nature of the worldly pleasure. First started off in the quest of our spiritual enlightenment, we we faced with a lot of problems with lot of difficulties, a lot of working out, a lot of difficulties.
As we go along as we go along, the level of our problems suffering will be reducing, will get reduced, and the level of our realizations, level of our understandings will increase increase. So while on the on the on the road or why towards that, because of our reduction or our our bad things and improvement in our spiritual realizations, we are bound to get name, bit of name and fame, and people saying, oh, he or she’s highly realized. People will come to venerate you. People will come to seek help and guidance. People will make offering to use to you.
And there’s a possibility of you will become very rich and very famous for that purpose. Even though you like or not, people will come with offerings, people will come to venerate, people will respect you, and will left, right, center. However, you will come to a point possibility you become so rich by the offering that your wealth could be will be same of that that particular deity who’s supposed to be the lord of the entire wealth. However, even though your name and fame while journeying towards your spiritual goal, name and fame, wealth and so forth you get, important that one must not get attached to it, must not get clinging mind to it, and end up kind of, you know, worried about those things. Instead, you wanna give it all up.
One have be free of attachment to this and practice or instead of getting conceited, instead of getting proud of oneself being well known and well respected, being object of veneration by others, instead, one practice the humbleness and one practices the detachment from the wealth, and all this this came without you wanting it wanting them and doing such a thing, engaging in such a way is the holy tradition practice of the great beings or the the the sons or the victorious one. Ones. So while Rinpoche says, while he’s discussing this particular Aspiration training, it reminds him of a a a little bit of a story that he would like to relay to you, which is not a fictitious story. A real one. There’s a Geshe called Ben.
He was from the Pempo region of Upper Tibet. Okay? And when before he became a geshe, before he became ordained, he used to be a layperson who used to work really hard. He’s got a big farm. He used to he used to farm so well.
And in the in the he got the farm going there, there. And in the evening, in the daytime, he used to go around robbing people, you know, decoying himself, you know, robbing people off. And in the evening, he used to go and thieving. In the evening, he goes to around stealing things from other peoples, and so that he can have a really good life for himself as things to eat, food to eat, so to speak, clothe himself well. But he troubled.
He had never had enough. He never had enough food to eat. Never have never had anything enough. So one day he got really disillusioned and said, this is no good. So he ended up becoming ordained.
He thought, oh, I might try the practice of Dharma. So he became ordained. He he became a monk, and then he practiced really hard. He studied hard. He meditated hard.
So eventually, he became very very well real highly realized, and became very well known expert, sort of a Geshe, famous Geshe, which would come to known as Geshe Ben. Then in one of his discourse, he said, look, guys, you should practice Dharma. It’s much more easy to make living than than what I than a normal sort of mainstream way of doing. Long time ago, I used to steal, thief, rob, farm, business, everything. Never had enough to eat.
But now, he said this now I don’t want all of them, but I don’t wanna eat anything, I don’t want nothing. However, all the different types are are competing who can get first to my mouth. Not this teaching. Right. Perhaps it’s a humorous point to stop today’s teaching.
So we’ll leave it here. Should so can I ask? I’m curious or whatever. I have a question about exchanging self for others. Yeah.
It refers to I understand that the teaching as far as exchanging myself for others and that. But it seems like if somebody is throwing paper on the beach all the time, we have two people going around picking paper off the beach, we need to let everybody know that they shouldn’t paper on the beach and the beach stays clean. So what about teaching others or running an ad campaign against karmic exchange? In other words, you exchange yourself for somebody else, but do have any responsibility to teach somebody else? Or Can you say the question again, just to make sure, please?
Yeah. It seems I guess my thought is Yeah. I just can’t seem to get the punchline. That’s why I know Roughly what is speaking. Yeah.
It it So to translate, you know, properly so you can understand is I gotta get the punch line. I haven’t got the punch line yet. Gotcha. Okay. Punch line is if I just exchange myself for others and others just keep going out and blah blah blah Yeah.
Then it seems like there’s only one person cleaning up the beach, and the beach is getting very dirty all the time. So what should we do? Yeah. What should we do? Should we teach others or what?
Or or we should be We should just keep our to our own practice. Okay. I got it. Rinpoche says that while you are practicing, you know, developing that sort of thought of self exchanging, if that persons keep throwing things at the beaches, right, whatever, there’s not much you can do. Practically speaking, well, you can’t do much about that.
What can you do? If he pleases if it pleases him to do that way, what can you do? Along the same lines, how can you then deal with something like child sexual abuse? There’s so many children being sexually abused. First of all, obviously we try to be compassionate to the perpetrator, Mhmm.
But what responsibility? I mean Yeah. Like I said, we believe we have a responsibility to protect children. Yeah. You’re fair enough.
Well, it it it it varies degree of the, you know, crimes that people would do. If he’s just throwing a few little things, you know, which seems you if it annoys you, so to speak, then maybe perhaps you look for another location to go. Somebody’s just kidding. I’ll ask other question, but you get a better answer there. Actually, this answers your question too, which was okay before.
Sure. We got a lot of people like child child abusers and all the people who did like yourself throwing things around things everywhere and things like that. All, you know, we can’t people who committed that sort of crime, throwing things around for lesser sort of thing, and then the higher serious thing, people, you know, abuse their child and things like that. The basic point of where we could understand if you happen in charge of that situation is that that person’s you must treat that person alive and compassion. That that person in case of abusing child is that person is kind of dominated by his or her, how to say, idiosyncrasy kind of a fantasy or whatever, some karmically wrong ignorance ignorance thing thing is driven.
So you feel a compassion from that point of view and trying to explain him while whatever the society or the government will find a system to lock them away or whatever. There is that system. Right? We can’t do anything about that. Despite within that that sort of framework must explain to that person what he’s is doing to the child as bad, what sort of a bad consequence he will experience in his later life by doing that, and what sort of harm, what sort of psychological damage that it brings about to that child, and what sort of a long-lasting scar that the child will have in his when his or her grown up period, and tell all the bad things he or she has done, the repercussion of it, and tell the good things what sort of a good things will he get experience in the later life should happen not to do it doesn’t engage in better things.
Now whether that person understand directly at the spot or not, that’s another story. But this is how the people in charge should do that. In other word, education campaign, ad campaign, as you said, that you that’s what you should do. Yep. I’m almost I’m almost afraid to ask this question.
I have the extreme good fortune to have a great deal of negative karma right now on my back. Uh-huh. Is would it be better for me for my spiritual practice to continue to just bear it? Or I mean, by sitting on my cushion and going about that sort of thing, should I get off the chair? Is that is that trying to introduce comfort into spiritual into the spiritual path?
So what or when you say bad karma sitting on your back Well, I mean, like, I’m in kind of excruciating Should I continue sitting on my cushion, or should I Oh, I see. You’re dealing with that. Okay. Even more ripen on me now. Instead of trying to release, I’m trying to get some release Yeah.
So to speak. Okay. I got it. That’s better. I just I I think if I’m something other press more pressing.
This one. Pressing. Yeah. Yeah. I got it.
No. I got I got it. I got it. This one. Excuse me.
When Rinpoche explained the the something bad things happen, trouble problem to you, when when you happen to that, it is the way you think that it is happening. You feel good about it. Alright? At the same time, it does not mean to say that we have we haven’t we have a long way to go yet. So you just don’t use up all resources in one hit, so to speak, before we’re getting there.
So when you are when you’re in the initial stage, it’s like finding a middle way sort of tough. If you have a pain, get up and relax yourself. So it’s better that way, so you can eventually get there rather than, you know, without actually getting there, without having finished there, you just press the gas really hard and you, you know, without get getting the journey, so to speak, but you you you run out of the the impetus and everything. So it is it has it’s it’s a in a in a way, it is more of a wrong thing to pushing yourself at that time to really destroy the the the vehicle that you’ve got, which is, you know, you’re, I suppose, in physical. So it’s alright to relax a bit and, you know, get some to take the physical precautions, health care, that is in itself you think correctly.
It is in itself a practice towards getting that end. You with me now? Yeah. So do whatever is the if you find anything that assisting to gain your Lojong thing, then it’s fine.