Audio recorded at Tibetan Buddhist Institute, Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Kyabje Rinpoche fields questions from students on both practical and philosophical fronts in this 28-minute Q&A at a Chenrezig retreat’s close. He provides step-by-step guidance for practicing Chenrezig at home, adapting the practice to available time: from full sessions with refuge, offerings, and visualization to bare-minimum versions for busy days. He clarifies heart and mind as metaphorically interchangeable expressions of compassion, then addresses how plants differ from sentient beings despite following similar cycles of impermanence. He explores the Buddhist view of karma so intricate that beings can be reborn as trees, illustrating with the story of a monk reborn as a tree for appropriating monastic property. For practitioners who have received Chenrezig initiation.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 1994-07-16 – 10A – Retreat – KR.mp3
UUID: b9c8db4f-bede-4743-a5c1-8f9a99093069
Teacher: Kyabje Rinpoche
Collection: Chenrezig
Date: 1994-07-16
Recorded at: Tibetan Buddhist Institute, Adelaide
Words: ~2,172
So in this case, Rinpoche says, kind of have to play by the ear, so to speak, you see. I mean, you you just don’t praise people for the sake of praising. Okay? If somebody done a good job, then with you, you sort of kind of, you know, say you’re well done and you’re good. And if somebody’s doing bad things, obviously, you know, you don’t go and press for it.
You see? So just sort of play by your ears, sort of think how it, you know, work it out. Perhaps, maybe, Geshe-la might like to give us one final piece of advice about when we’re when we’re doing the Chenrezig practice back home, what does he think is the most important thing that we should meditate on when we’re silently repeating the mantra? What’s what’s what would his what would be his final advice to us about what the topic of our meditation should be? When you go back home, you mean?
Yeah. When we’re back home, we’re saying the mantra silently all alone. Yeah. Should should we be cons what should we be concentrating on? Okay.
Fine. Now when you go back home and when you engage in your practice, right, if you have a proper time, if have a bit of time in your hand, then just go through what you did here. Obviously, you know, you’d go through the taking refuge and things, you know. But the prime thing not to forget is the motivational factor of the bodhicitta thing. That’s the number one.
Okay? And then if you got time in the morning, say, if you happen to have a time in the morning when you get up your office, you clean yourself, whatever. And then if you happen to have a something to offer, it’s great to make an offering to the to the the pictures of or photograph or whatever. And then you bless everybody by saying that the three syllable mantra OM MANI PADME HUM right. And do and then sit down and then you go through the proper solo, you know.
First, start with, you know, the the front generation, the self-generation, then where you need point or juncture where you need to recite the mantra as many as you possibly you can. And then finish off with a good dedication prayer and so forth if you have the time. When you make your cushion to sit, I forgot to say, you make three prostrations. Right? Okay.
Now, if you’re running short of time, you haven’t got much time to do things, then obviously, if you can make offering, that’s good. Right? And you sit down, you make three prostrations, sit down your cushions. And then if you say your the Yeah. The refuge and mind generation, you know, the Sanje Tu, all the things, say that.
And then visualize very quickly, say, within the within the sphere of emptiness, you arise quickly into the form of Chenrezig through the syllable, then say a few mantras. And then at the end, you know, with that with that, staying there, sustaining that, that visualizing for a while, and say a few mantras, and then you finish it off by saying, you know, the the dedication prayers, may bodhicitta may arise more and, you know, not diminish, that kind of thing, and finish it off. That is an extreme case of not not enough time. In the case of extreme extreme case, no time, or more to the point, you really don’t feel like it, but you said that that, you know, say the the mind generation prayers, really, really quick mind generation, and give a good quick, brisk sort of thought to this mind bodhicitta. Right?
And then finish it up by saying the the dedicating dedication prayer, and then off you go. No.
You’re talking about the physical kind of a doctor anatomy sort of thing? No. No. No. It where he talked about he talked about the, you know, that Good heart, good mind.
Heart and, you know Good mind. And talked he talked about interchangeably. Mhmm. So I mean, obviously, that’s where the heart, you know, seemed to reside symbolically. Yeah.
That’s why I think he’s talking the symbolic thing. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Know. But it is yeah. So what do you mean I ask about it? Uh-huh. When he say heart and mind, it’s heart is like symbolic thing here here.
So you you want me to ask in terms of we talk with heart and head sort of difference or Uh-huh. Mind as as intellectual, dry intellectual sort of thing, intellect? No. Just I gotta get the question right here. Sure.
I I to say that he said, I I mean, I noticed that he thinks about anything to change it, but is there anything further to say about that? Okay. I’ll ask anyway. When we say good mind, good heart, see, basically, the same, really. It is the it’s a state of mind of feeling of being good to others, wanting to be good and be helpful and be nice to others.
So perhaps when we say heart, it just make it a bit more easier, softer way of approaching expressing that side of our feeling. More like symbolically because where the heart is, this mind is, so to speak. Right? The natural fact, good heart and good mind is sort of similar sort of thing. Perhaps good heart is a bit of a saying more like a metaphorically rather than the actual cognitive or the state of luminosity sort of thing, you know, as being mind as mind.
It’s almost like a saying. In Tibetan, we call flower In English, you say flower. So it was the same sort of stuff we’re talking about in similar sort of ways. But you should be more expert in this. Just a point I’d like to ask for.
I think I understand sentient beings, but when it comes to plant life, plants grow and plants die, process. Is the view, or what is the correct view, if there is such a correct view, of how to view, in our practice, plants? Plants from the Buddhist perspective sort of thing. I got it. This one.
See, speaking briefly on that is from the Buddhist perspective, the the plants, the why the way when see, through the seed or through the cause and condition, it grows. Right? That factor is what we call is the how do you say now? It’s been it’s like it’s been caused to grow, so to speak. Right?
Through the element. Now through through the the elements combined in that form, the plant grows. Right? And then when that the harmony within that plant falls out, then it goes in the process of withering or drying it out. We call that as impermanent sort of thing.
Right? The impermanent impermanent. See okay. So the the fact that they are born through the elements, the fact that dry, they go through the process through the falling out of the the harmony of the the elements within them. So we call this born and then destroyed through impermanence nature of it all.
And it seemed like almost similar like to us or the sentient beings. However, they do not have the the the feeling or the and they do not have ability to feel and discern the way the sentient beings can. So this is where the mind they don’t have the mind, so to speak. And while we are go through the similar sort of process in terms of born and and dying, however, we have the mind, and we have the the, how to say, the feeling or to to be sentient about it. So this is where the difference occurs according to from the Buddhist point of view.
So the plants and trees go through the similar process as that of a human being or that of the sentient beings. But the difference here is okay. The difference is that. Okay? The sentient beings here have the have the the ability to discern what is right and what is wrong.
Okay? Or at least we have the instinct to be helpful and to be nice and to be neutral, to indifference. Therefore, we are called the sentient beings, you know, regardless of form and shape that we find ourselves. Whereas the plant and trees go similar process over through their through their seed as a cause and condition of fertilizers and and so forth. They grow and they die.
However, they don’t have the instinct or to be a bit more higher, have actual discerning mind, doing things that will bring unhappiness to others and or doing certain thing, a discerning ability to that brings happiness or unhappiness to others, whereas the plant don’t have it, whereas sentient being they do have through knowingly or instinctively. So this is how we differentiate. Yo. Yeah. Yeah.
I think it’s true. I think it’s true. Yeah. Well, we’re kind of opening another can of worms here, but it’s See, the Buddha that who is supposed to have reborn or manifested as a tree, that’s true. Buddha can manifest as a tree, water, anything.
So to ordinary people like us, when we enjoy the water or the tree, tree, the touch, the satisfaction we get to arrive from that. Just the touch, the satisfaction, the tree, water, anything. That is natural fact. That’s not tree. It’s Buddha manifest appears a tree in order to help those sentient beings.
Alright? However, However, there are extreme cases where due to the intricacy of the how the karmic reaction, how the karmic evolution happen is so detailed, so minute, incredibly difficult to explain how it happened. But no matter how small, how intricate it may look, it has got its precise cause and condition propelled by the karmic potency. Potency. Now there is a case where some sentient beings are reborn as a trees.
The the case happened on the exactly look like the tree to due to the certain, you know, severity of action they did. Here, it may seem like anecdotal sort of evidence here or anecdotal sort of thing that Rinpoche said. It is said or it has been mentioned in the previous teachings that there was a case where there’s a lot of a big assembly of great the fully ordained monks practicing there. And one and there’s a one stick or a tree. Oh, yeah.
It’s tree was there, which is mainly used commonly used by all the monks there, the fully ordained. However, one of the monks happened to be a little bit corrupted, so he chopped it off and took it at home. Okay? He took it at his his own place, his personal use. So here, later on, it is said that he was reborn in a family in the form of a tree in the orchard or garden or somewhere.
Born. I know it’s, like, unbelievable. It’s born. He was born. Right?
Born. And the people, you know, kind of the kids, what are playing, throwing things at it, and impaling it with their different objects or what have you, where the case is that the tree was it was seemed to be in utter distress, and it’s supposed to be making calls for help and things of that nature have occurred. So that tree, although it looks like tree in actual fact, is not a tree. It is a sentient thing. It’s appear and that sort of thing.
So it’s called possibility, it’s still not a tree. It’s a sentient. The way the Buddha the Buddha became Buddha purely for the sake of sentient beings. Once Buddha once one when one becomes the Buddha, one’s master plan one’s master plan to bring about benefits and helps is incredibly incredibly, how to say, multitude incredibly many folds, incredibly many fold. So Buddha will do whatever is required of him or her in order to reach reach any form of happiness help to others, Buddha will undertake that shape of situation or circumstance, sense, in which case tree, bridge, water, animal, whatever is necessary, Buddha will manifest in that form and bring happiness.
So to summarize that sort of the the the extent of the Buddhist enlightened activities where has made a plan, his manual of how to behave in a bodhisattva way that that due to my good due to the due to the due to the good things I’ve done here, may I may I be may I be born as, if necessary to help others, born as food, water, bridge, tree, plant, car, whatever. He has made a very very strong prayer or dedication for him to be in that sort of position should a circumstance, or should a group of sentient beings need his manifestations in order to get themselves, you know, organized, so to speak.