Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 43-minute teaching from 1987, Choedak grounds compassion in Buddhist analysis of suffering and delusion. He traces how self-grasping generates all negative emotions—attachment, hatred, jealousy, pride—and explains the three higher trainings (morality, meditation, wisdom) as direct antidotes. He then explores the tension between renunciation and advanced tantric practice, using the story of Virūpa, an abbot of Nālānda who maintained secret Vajrayāna practice while outwardly keeping monastic discipline. Choedak shows how realized practitioners transcend conventional vows not through carelessness but through wisdom that sees beyond dualism. He moves into the cultivation of compassion itself: how deep understanding of others’ suffering displaces self-pity and generates joyous effort; how a compassionate mind naturally heals and consolidates relationships; and how faith—understood as clarity, aspiration, and trustworthiness—forms the foundation for sincere Buddhist practice. Practical and philosophical, with emphasis on how suffering and problems become catalysts for liberation rather than obstacles.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 01 CiA.mp3
UUID: aed91bd4-1730-4db8-a7d3-d5ea353ad0b8
Teacher: Choedak
Collection: Compassion in Action (Choedak)
Date: 1987 (exact day not recorded)
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Words: ~6,382
Whenever there is this existence of discomfort in the mind mentally and physically due to this, it’s because it’s the suffering. And that’s because we have the grasping to the self, and thereby, due to grasping to the self in this case is seen as the first delusion, it’s ignorance and because of that, because of the misapprehension of the self it has the wrong projections such as liking and disliking and thereby to which one likes, the self likes develops attachment or greed. And those conditions that disapproves or prevents for oneself from gaining in which one is desiring develops hatred. And those conditions which seem to overtake your situations of obtaining them and then someone else’s or other conditions make oneself deprived of the situation develops jealousy in whichever referred conditions it is. If one is developing the actual obtainment through desiring towards it for the sake of the self then it develops pride.
So that’s how all this all the delusions, three and five and then eighty four thousand, all all develops from the from the the self-cherishing. Yeah. And therefore, you know, if we look at these things, Buddha’s very aim of teaching was to, you know, remove these three delusions. So the so three higher trainings namely the training of morality or training of meditation, training of wisdom, higher wisdom. These three are the actual direct remedies to these three departments and sometimes it is enumerated eighty four thousand delusions because each of these delusions, interdependent, you know, by interdependence on each other, all the delusions are interrelated to another.
So therefore there are lots and lots of delusions that we develop in relation to each other and sometimes they are predominant by hatred, sometimes by anger, sometimes ignorance. All the negative action that causes suffering problem to oneself, are necessarily predominated by one of the five delusions. Killing doesn’t have to be necessarily involved due to hatred. It can involve through ignorance. It can involve attachment, it can involve through hatred.
You know, some people do not necessarily kill because of hatred. Some people just kill out of fun. They just go for and then they go fishing, have a good time. And to go to fishing is is not because they have hatred to the fish, but they think that kind of life they wanted to spend their time is a great enjoyment. It’s mainly very much ignorance too and attachment to the way they spend their leisure.
Therefore, when they engage in that action of fishing, of course, there’s certain circumstance that prevents oneself from achieving then cause all sorts of delusions. Hatred, if the fish pulls you back, then you develop hatred and that’s how all complexity of the delusions becomes because of this. So therefore the higher three higher trainings actually try to show pave the ways of getting to know these delusions and how these particular delusions can be remedied by the practice of morality or discipline, meditation and wisdom. This is mainly to do with the very basic Buddhist approach, Nayanamarga, Nirvanajana, all agrees in that. There’s no philosophical argument in that sense.
Mainly for greed and attachment, the training of morality is to be implemented because training of morality is a technique to cool down one’s delusions, to cool down one’s delusions. Because we are basically born to be desirous of something, one another, and that is the first stepping stone to be in a challenge by these trainings. So therefore, various things that you have to give up, you have to give up, you have to renounce either as a lay practitioner or ordained or fully ordained or novice or whatever, the various dos and don’ts in that particular given situation. Yeah. Yeah.
That’s right. Yeah. Yeah. So this this old aim of the teachings, be it in Hīnayāna approach or Mahāyāna or or vajrayana approach, they’re all targeting the cause of suffering. It is the matter.
Well, it’s very much of a change of attitude and if your state of mind is to a level that you cannot possibly change your attitude, then you have to avoid it. Because the thing is, of course, everyone falls in different categories whether you renounce or not because some people feel like if you wanted to follow more in a Theravadin approach, you must follow these disciplines and that is the only way. And when in other approaches emphasizes other technique, doesn’t mean they overlook that approach though, but that that means that individuals fall in different categories, some are not feeling quite prepared to go that far of renouncing everything, but still wanted to take advantage of the profound teachings. Therefore the teaching doesn’t sort of restrict that only people in that level can practice and others can’t. So therefore when we reach to a certain level, all the vows are techniques of as a raft to make oneself understand to reach across.
But once you are once you it has totally influenced your mind, influenced your mind to develop this attitude, what is renouncing things and so forth, then there is a is a level that these conventional vows do not necessarily apply to you, know, that’s always a matter of your realization as a practitioner, practitioner develops. You know in vajrayana practices, I was discussing one of the gentlemen saying why we were serving wine and a piece of meat the day we just did the puja, know, Guru puja. He’s saying that in general Buddhist doctrine, you know, moral ethics, abstaining from, you know, alcohol is one of the five main principles of Shilas and and it is to be discarded like poison. But but when you you can relate to certain level of teachings through which mainly implementing the wisdom aspect, not necessarily method, mainly implementing the wisdom aspect more strongly, then you realize that in reality there’s no thing to be discarded. There’s nothing to be discarded.
There’s no pure and impure. Everything is mentally imputed from the impure vision only. So therefore techniques is trying to, even though you have taken a vow of not taking intoxicants as one of the five principles or just one that itself you’ve taken, but engaging in such vajrayana practice through which ceremony that all the things that biscuits and cookies and lollies and all these things that you have is not to be taken as cookies and lollies and what we normally impute them. But they are to be seen as the substance to develop the awareness of non duality. So it is through your meditation, through the ritual, through the power of mantra, mudra, and samadhi.
Through these three concentration, the physical gesture and various techniques that vajrayana utilizes have the power of transforming them because it’s your perception that says it’s impure. So there were a lot of all the great vajrayanas practitioner were great drunkards, great drunkards. They were potters, they were shit, they were they were, you know, they were all kinds of them, you know. They know they don’t have a beautiful background at all. They have and when they have reached to that this high level practitioner, you know, they have overcome this whole target of vajrayana is accelerating the wisdom aspect and thereby being able to go beyond the duality.
And therefore usage of certain things that are seen to be something you should renounce in pratimoksha, Theravadin trainings has to be accepted with great, you know, joy, providing that you have the wisdom and and the method to transmute it. It’s like a but this realization called vajra nature of your mind, when you have realized indestructible nature of your mind, the wisdom aspect of it, have the like the alchemy element of the quality, you can transform all best element, metal element base element into nature of the gold. There’s nothing impure to be discarded. So that level does not necessarily come easily unless you have accumulated merit, procured a lot of positive karma, either past or this life. So therefore, initially one has to be trained as much as one can in these trainings, and later on, as experiences tells that one does not necessarily need to go, but that’s very always has raised a lot of debate even monasteries where some realized beings has reached to this high level.
They are beyond these conventional moral ethics. One great master called Virūpa, one of the eighty four great men of them, vajrayana. He got eight eighty four great masters lined up, and he’s he’s he’s and girls. And he’s one of them. He’s one of them.
He was at the head of Nālānda University, the biggest learning center, you know, for Buddhist Buddhism. And he was teaching the that monastery was outwardly purely Vinaya, purely Sūtra, purely Theravadin approach, teaching all the sutras of behaviors and moral ethic discipline was the really matter where everyone go for and go there for to study. And he was doing that. And he himself has been a practitioner of vajrayana for all his life. And in the nighttime, he was always going to vajrayana practice, and he has kept secret to everybody that what he does and, you know, he everyone thought, I’ll just go going to bed, but he works out of sleep practice vajrayana.
And so he was there in daytime officiating as an abbot mainly just to fulfill his students, but for his own practice, those things was not necessary. He was doing paji yan practices all the time. But strangely or or, you know, enough, one night, you know, he had terrible, you know, after seventy years, very similar story like that of Asaṇga. He had terrible dreams that, you know, he got really shocked in the morning that he disinterested. He lost total disgust with the vajrayana practice.
It is not bringing him any realization, and he he he took his mala in the morning thinking, oh, I I have no karmic connection in this life, so I must get rid of, you know, stop this practice of being should leave myself as a pure disciplined monk, and that’s it. So he went and threw his mala in the in the toilet and went back went back to sleep. And this is a very interesting story. And the in the very early in the morning, all of a sudden, this goddess called Vajravārāhī, who is the wisdom aspect of enlightened mind, and came in his dream and said, oh, noble son, wake up from your deep sleep. Don’t do that.
Don’t misbehave yourself like that. Go and fetch your mala. Clean it and continue your practice. You’re about to attain your realization. You’re throwing it away.
Come on. Don’t do it. Go and grab your mala. And he woke up and he said, oh, that’s strange. And he went and, you know, grabbed from, you know, you know, it’s really interesting.
He he has to grab his bare bare hand in the toilet and bring his mala, wash it very nicely with all the sainted water, and then he continues practice. Consecutively day after day, he reached sixth bhūmi, sixth stage of enlightenment day after day. Just like that. And then his realization and perception of everything including his own practice changed just dramatically, you know. And he his interest of continuing as an abbot was not there anymore.
You know? Then day and night, all this pure and impure vajrayana and non vajrayana practice, nothing was there for him. So he was drinking wine and drinking, and he was calling all these, you know, all kind of things, you know, and lot of rumors going on in the monastery. Rumors going in the monastery. And and they said, yeah.
You know, we’re gonna kick you out. You you know, that you’re not behaving yourself as a good apology as you used to be. And he didn’t worry him at all. But then there was a great revolution from all the monks. They really wanted to kick him out.
And then he went out, but still he was dressed dressed as a monk and he still was officiating. Then he took all his robes, folded them nicely, took in front of the main shrine, offered it to Śākyamūni Buddha. He said, I had enough as a monastic life and I wonder as a yogi, I will go. He said, you are noble as you see, and I I’m Virūpa means I’m just wretched. I’m just useless, so I go.
So he left, and all the young monks were clapping hands, and, you know, everyone was chasing after him. Really, he was it really shocked him. And some monks monks really still was chasing after him. And he reached and they knew that he can’t cross because the river Ganges was like, know, bursting into anything in this months and time, and no one could cross without a boat, you know. And looked around and he looked back.
All the monks were coming after him laughing and shouting at him, and the river was so big. He spoke to the river Ganges saying that, look, you are holy river Ganges, don’t you? You wash sin, but my sin is terribly heavy. You can’t wash, so I don’t want to touch you. You let me go.
He threw his belt on the water and the water just went out like this, and there came a dry path for him. He crossed the river and all the monks, oh, they said we have we have, you know, we have kicked our great realized teacher. You know, this is a problem. Big mistake. Big mistake.
And finally, so that is interesting. From this what we understand is Virūpa as a practitioner had that problem thinking that I should behave carefully so that monks think I’m still a nicely behaved monk, so that was his problem. His tantric practice has nothing wrong, no problem at all. He was doing accordingly and the realization was about to come. Only was he was taking tantric practice something secret and the Theravad usual training something very nice and you have to appear discipline and that was his problem.
So he had this dualistic concept within these two practices. So therefore he had to throw his mala in the toilet and he has to really pick it up and that actually symbolizes his total overcoming of non duality between pure and impurity. Cutting the mala, no, no, cutting the letting, you know, making the river Ganges to set him a dry path is drying up the stream of delusions. So all these great masters of the past, particularly in the vajrayana practitioners, when they really reached to those level, these conventional vows for them is no longer applicable. As long as one reaches to that, this moral ethics are very fundamental basis and foundations.
As we said if you don’t face hardships, you don’t gain any realizations. So the comfort and everything that we are surrounded by is not so much they are bad, but our perception of them is so wrongly deluded thereby it over deludes our mind and therefore we can’t develop. Otherwise, the same wine, the wine, the same people, the same conditions, there’s nothing wrong in the objects. There’s nothing wrong in the objects. So if we can realize these things through accumulating merit and practices, finally when we develop wisdom, then there’s nothing, there’s nothing to be discarded and so forth but not many people I tell you the truth will be able to reach that very soon with very, very many years of dedicated practices.
Because suffering has been suffering and delusion has been stopped and accumulated so many lifetimes and the practice is probably only a matter of several other lifetimes. So the progress is really slow. Okay. I think we finished complete the rest that’s left over. It’s very much very much the similar, but as a result of developing equanimity, loving kindness, and developing the dangerousness of self-cherishing and benefit of cherishing others, one would therefore become very sensitive as the way I was referring to this morning, like Buddha’s sensitivity of having a hair in the eyes, become so sensitive to see people suffering more than that of yours.
That is the act of compassion. If we do not see people suffering, we cannot be compassionate. We cannot help them to remove them from suffering and its causes. So that sensitivity of us, of picking and knowing people suffering is is only by training self in those above mentioned topics and realizing them. And then we become very able to Usually we complain and we become disappointed and dissatisfied because we are suffering more than we can.
And therefore we are trying to uproot them and remove them as quick as possible and not having the slightest moment to be able to see others suffering. So when you develop these above mentioned topics and qualities, you become that your own suffering become very insignificant and sufferings of other beings become very, very noticeable, very noticeable. This is quality, that call, this is the quality of a compassionate mind. Compassionate mind means, you know, whose mind is directed in targeting the mind to discover suffering and its causes is the function of compassion. It is not so much of a nice feeling.
That’s loving kindness. It’s just wanting to give happiness and causes, but the loving kindness cannot be perfect if it was not helped by compassion. You know, they they just they are very complementary to each other, but one without the other wouldn’t become a perfect, you know, loving kindness or compassion. And see that if you do not have the compassion which sees the suffering that causes mere loving kindness, only develops others to when it has to be intellectually thought I have to love others and those reasons we were mentioning about. Aspect of it.
And therefore, your affection to them, towards other beings, makes you a responsible being to to to give and remove the suffering and its causes. So there is this repeated energy in you that you don’t have to almost it doesn’t become conditional. The act of compassion doesn’t become conditional. Your understanding of the people suffering makes them nearer, more familiar, somebody you feel very responsible to give, not something that you think, oh, it’s suffering, maybe I should do, shouldn’t do. There isn’t though no room for judgment, doing this judgment.
And therefore, because of your deeper understanding of suffering as I was referring this morning, the better suffering we know, the better courage, better strength and joyous effort we will develop. We are always running short of strength. We could be, you know, we might have strained determination for some time, few days, but then it slacks down. We have laziness that overtakes our mind and various things that overtakes them. That’s because our realization of the suffering of others is not deep enough, thereby the mind mind is trying to trying to withdraw itself from that and trying to still engage or indulge into happiness because happiness itself is suffering.
This is what the real is a person who understand realize intensive suffering would not find that much of happiness in happiness. Happiness. And therefore, even you we find we find ourselves engaging into into, you know, experiencing happiness, whatsoever experiencing happiness, still we know back in the mind that this is too subject to change. So there’s no clinging mind that will hang on to it, hanker upon it. Therefore this vigor, that strength in you, it is so prepared to let it go when it’s necessary.
There’s no that no clinging mind, you know? There’s no clinging mind. There’s a story when a mother whose child died and during the time of Buddha who have heard a lot about Buddha’s power and blessings and how everyone became so happy by seeing him. And she took her dead child to see Buddha and asked, I’ve heard of your great fame and reputation and blessings and so forth. Would you please be able to revive my son who I don’t want to see die at this age?
They say, yeah, very well, I will do it, providing that you do something too. So he said, okay, you leave your son here and first of all, what you do is you go into any family, any family. You don’t have to go all family if you don’t have to. From any family, from whose family you can get a handful of rice or more clearly handful of, you know, oven dust, oven ashes, ashes, in which family death has not occurred. Providing that you are able to bring that, I’ll definitely revive your son.
So she thought, oh, this is very easy. So she she went and hoping that she can find she asked everybody and she everybody was teasing her. What are you thinking? You know? Everybody dies and, you know, so Buddha didn’t give much of teaching.
He just said, you go. So everybody was giving her teachings and scolding her. What do you think? Are you are you just giving us a hard time? Don’t you know where our mother died last week?
What are you doing? So, you know, really. Afterwards, she went the whole day and she couldn’t find any family where death has not occurred. So she came back exhaustive mind and but they didn’t say anything. But they didn’t say anything.
She realized that that this occurs everywhere, so therefore she can’t ask anything. So she gone this kind of this when she just understand people suffering, how many people have suffered by the loss of their children and family members, when she came to know the intensity of people suffering, her own suffering of losing the child wasn’t much of an important thing. So she was able to let go. So that this strength and vigor we are talking about only as a function of compassion only develops when we understand being the suffering of other people. This very, the we are talking about, laziness we’re talking about, these are the various hindrances in our practice, the the various hindrances in our practice, the laziness or postponement of thinking that I’m not really a good one that I can do as much as all those great beings did.
Too bad I’m born in this kind of family. Too bad I didn’t, you know, come to dharma until late. So we go we have all this self pitying. That’s called self pitying laziness. You know, trying to find excuses.
You’re born in this kind of place or country or family or, you know, all these things. At the same time, the laziness of procrastination, postponing, maybe maybe I can do sometime else. So these things only comes There’s no way of we can develop the six perfections such as joyous effort without understanding the depth and intensity of suffering. So if we really do want to know, as Buddha very clearly at the very beginning show the noble, the nobility, the perfect understanding of suffering is nirvana. We you cannot do anything if you don’t know if there’s a danger of, you know, flooding, you couldn’t possibly think or imagine of building a dam.
So therefore, you know, the more we understand the dangerousness of our own suffering and all other people, then all these spiritual qualities of patience, you know, joy effort, and all these qualities naturally develops. They are, I would say beautiful ornaments of the compassionate mind. We cannot be compassionate if we are not possessed by these armors of qualities. So all these other things that I have enumerated experiences, no problems, no problems are no problems, problems give further furthering stepping stones and thereby every stepping stone that one one finds becomes a very much a progressive factor rather than, you know, the experience of sudden suffering on oneself doesn’t feel that how terrible I am, I’m not gonna make this and doesn’t become discouraging factor, but rather it becomes more of a fuel that activates your sense of determination. And therefore the more suffering you have, it says that the more suffering you have, the more skillful you will become to see that as a purification of your negative karma.
Means you’ll be able to see that negative karma and problems in you is the real indications that you are exhausting your negative karma providing that you can see it. If you see it, that this is terrible, then you create another karma to to suffer its consequences. So our view, our perception is very important. It’s only Dharma is only changing the perception of the reality that we have rather than rather than the rather than the reality itself. Reality cannot be changed.
I said at the public talk, Buddha never invented the reality. Reality was there, but he was only trying to show how it can be seen different ways and how it can be seen perfectly. Because when a person develop these qualities of compassion and loving kindness, then he you don’t have to be a nurse, you don’t have to be a doctor, you don’t have to be good at any particular things, you can heal the hurt ones, the compassionate mind, the person who is compassionate, their attention where they heal and help other people really reaches seems to be able to communicate at the heart of the people. This is one of the talents of compassion because it has this ability. There are many people we in Tibetans, we go so called the hand blessings of high lamas.
When you hear that Hai Lama’s going to pass through your village in a week’s time, everyone get ready. Know who got to jump so that they can touch his hand. Really go in to wear nicest cloth on their thinking that they’ll see someone, great teacher, passing by. He’s riding always on horse, you know, so you go and wait hundreds of them in rows, and Lama would, of course, touch his hand and sometimes even with a stick, you know, if he thinks that’s too tiring for him. You know, some people would jump under his, you know, legs and whatever.
And and because they’re Tibetans and people who have this kind of culture to see their spiritual masters as the embodiment of compassion, and when also the teacher also develop this feeling, you know, how so many people have gone, peasants come so many miles just to walking, walking, to touch one part of his body, you know, such day this connection, a lot of people really have this sense of conviction that their sickness can been cured, they’ve been a lot happier, and all this kind of type of healing, type of healing can be done also through compassion. And also very sad people very sad people when they are really spiritually minded wanting to and in Tibet we don’t especially place where we are we come from is very remote area. The nearest neighborhood would be about four hundred miles away and being able to go to monasteries and temples is very difficult because in those remote areas we don’t have monasteries. So being able to see someone, see some great teachers is not very easy. So the people who have a lot of suffering in their life and very sad, when they hear there is a great teacher coming and giving an initiation and giving things, they go there with happiness.
They just forget all the sadness, you know? That kind of element people develop in some kind of faith and it has because people see and cherish in that way and the practitioner themselves try to put their sincere practices to I would say to communicate that the essence of the teachings of Buddha in that comparative manner, it has that sense of you know, in the beings and the receptivity therefore anything whether the teacher is a great realized being or not, this ability, the faith is very important, it will second. It consolidate existing relationships, you see, if we don’t have, know, the relationships are a bit wonky and they’re not very stable, it’s definitely proving to be something wrong with our sense of compassion with others. That does not necessarily mean that you have to always stuck with one relationship not being able to be happy with it. This doesn’t suggest that compassionate person always hangs under it.
Means even though the breakup of certain relationships is not really a breakup, it consolidates the real mutual relationship. The real such as husband and wife relationship might be might break, but actual relationship through really loving, becoming best friend in other words, before was hating each other so much, but now with this sense of compassion, this change is totally necessary for both of us so the perception of other person totally changed, therefore it can consolidate. If we have this practice of compassion to allow. Of course it then directly, you know, because that indication of compassion doesn’t come there’s existing negativities. So it eliminates one’s negativities.
And it discovers the pleasantness of others. You don’t because you have no negativities in you, there’s nothing dye or color of your mind that can really color the other people’s mind. Therefore, there’s nothing but pleasantness for others to see. The the unpleasantness was very much projection of one’s own, confused and deluded mind. If one has purified them, there’s no way that such unpleasantness can be projected or perceived.
Because say without extra stimulus we can perceive so many different things. So when we have uprooted our own cause of problem, everything is very nice, everything is very pleasant. It imposes no views at all. Then there’s no views, you don’t have to particularly follow or do do this way. If you don’t if you’re not able to do this way, you break a vow.
There’s no such kind of strict rigid vows person who is able to practice compassion. There’s one story of what Śākyamūni Buddha born as a bodhisattva as a sailor, as a navigator, as a sailor and carrying different merchants from different islands to different islands and carrying all these commodities. Then he all of a sudden there came a huge giant in the middle of the sea. This is a quite popular story. And this he knew that the strength and power of this giant can easily capsize his boat and he was carrying five hundred merchants and all their commodities.
And he knew that if he allow this giant to capsize and that will cause so much suffering of losing all these things, killing all these people, and giant, poor giant have to carry most negative karma after killing them and also much suffering with all the family members. So he couldn’t just bear the thinking that he could just just forget it. So he said, you know, because he was a bodhisattva, a trainee, he said, look, if instead, only optional thing that I can do, even though Bodhisattva would never take others life, never take life, he said, if I take his life, the negative karma will ripen upon me of killing him and these people would be safe. So they that wouldn’t cause these people, the the giant to be comingly in in a in a carrying all this burden of killing all this five hundred people. So therefore, I it’s it would be best to rescue the five hundred people as well as this giant.
So he said, I must kill him. So he had to kill him. He was successful too. So sometimes Bodhisattva is courageous enough to do some outrageous things that normal people think it’s really, really unvirtuous action. So, I mean, we are now able to do so, you know, these are the type of functions when bodhisattvas were developing pure compassion mind are able to do without thinking that they are breaking rules and regulations because as they are so confident with their compassion and wisdom that nothing can, there’s unflagging conviction in the practice and they always do the right thing.
They always do the small skillful thing in that given situation. Therefore, though it neglects nobody, know, so even it’s although it appears to be the giant, to be really, really killed, know, at any rate to save hundred people, but his whole idea was so that he’s accepting him with great compassion. There is a concept in Buddhist teachings, you can kill somebody providing there are ten possible conditions. Ten possible conditions. Whether there is ten possible condition or not, according to what we are discussing here, suggest that as long as you are being compassionate for others and your wisdom is sufficient to support this, you can can do whatever you think is best.
So as a bodhisattva buddha in his many previous life has done many things to the level that he feed his whole body to the hungry tigress and to the level that he had to kill others. So therefore the forgiveness we were talking about also comes from compassionate. Compassionate mind only always can forgive things. human beings make mistakes and therefore it forgiven. Even police give forgiven once or twice.
I don’t know they’re compassionate or not but according to the law, it releases oneself from the bondage of selfishness. So these are the all the activity of compassion. We don’t have to go in-depth. It develops faith. This faith I think needs to be discussed at this stage because faith is something an integral part of any spiritual path.
There is a danger these days that Buddhism finding to be very scientifically acceptable and logical and thereby you take it as attractive as it is, but then really don’t look at the faith element of it. Doesn’t require the faith as a prerequisite for appreciating Buddhism, but to put in the practice, putting the understanding of Buddhism to practice, you don’t necessarily need the faith. The faith in this case, there are three types. There are three types of faith. First is the lucid faith.
The clarity of your understanding. Clearly, you understand what Buddhism is all about. You you clearly understand what Buddhism is all about. Under some understanding what you think among many spiritual path, this teaching is really suitable. It is logical and it is really meaningful, it’s true and it really suits your practices.
That’s called the sense of clarity in your mind. That develops some sense of faith, which we call, lucidity, clarity, you have a clarity. If you have that lucid faith, which is not very easy to develop, if you have that lucid faith, it’s very nature of that faith that you desire to practice. You want to practice that. You wanted to put into practice.
That’s called faith of desire, faith of aspiration, wanting to wanting yourself to practice. And the the nature of that faith of aspiration is such that as you practice as you practice, as you practice, it has this experiential realizations in you that it become trustworthy faith, unshakable faith. It doesn’t change no matter who is going to give you amazing kind of know, to refute your view of the teachings and practices. It’s not going to not going to change. It’s like mountain like unshakable faith can be developed.
It’s not mere liking something, not knowing what really it is all about, doesn’t serve the foundation of having developing this unshakable faith. Most people in other religious teachings seems to have developed unshakable faith, but they are not preceded by the faith of clarity and faith of and aspiration. When these two things are lacking, then it become very dogmatic, it become very sectarian, it become cause of self-cherishing. These usually analogous an example that practicing Buddhism with faith and with this aspiration and with trustworthy faith is like a person, a sick person trying to recover from his sickness or a traveler who is caught by rainfall. Who is traveling and who all of a sudden is caught in rainfall.
So what should he do? He knows there’s somewhere to go for shelter. He has to be quite clear about there’s a shelter somewhere that I can go and, you know, so that you can, you know, you know, go there for for until until the rain stops. So knowing that there’s there’s a cave, say, similar, there’s knowing there’s a cave that you can go and take shelter is like the faith of clarity. If you didn’t know there is a in a cave, then of course you wouldn’t you wouldn’t be able to do anything providing that you know but that is not sufficient.
That is not sufficient. Providing that you know clearly and convincingly that there is a there is a cave, then it’s really possible that you might walk faster towards the cave. That’s aspiration, faith of aspiration. And the faith of aspiration that because you you walk on the basis of your clarity which has to be convincing one, then the the act of going towards it wouldn’t be wouldn’t be interferable. Interferable.
It cannot be stopped because you got tired halfway through or something. It you will whatsoever continue. Your act of going itself make you closer to the to the to the destination, and therefore, when you actually reach to the cave through those hardworking, many, many, you know, hours of walking towards that, when you actually gain experiences, the the shelter, then you have trustworthy faith. So this from this what we understand is having some understanding of Buddhist teachings, how they could be very, very beneficial as a remedial forces for uprooting our delusions, at least minimizing and reducing this, providing that we know that they’re really indispensable for enacting us to do so, that’s faith of faith of clarity. After this, then you have you will practice as much as you can.
So you are very engaging