Audio recorded at Tibetan Buddhist Institute, Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 48-minute talk, Kyabje Rinpoche explores how meditation gradually becomes effortless as the mind habituates to its object, drawing from Śāntideva’s teaching that meditation is not merely sitting in place but anchoring the mind on a single focus. He examines the mechanism of habituation—how both afflictive emotions like anger and positive states like compassion develop through repeated exposure, distorted conceptions, and mental seeds—with vivid examples: an enemy’s face triggering anger automatically, or compassion arising spontaneously upon seeing a sentient being. He grounds this in the Compendium of Valid Cognition’s teaching that positive qualities like love and wisdom can be developed without limit through sustained practice. A practical Q&A closes the talk, addressing how to handle distracting sense objects and return the mind to meditation.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 1993-09-03 – 15B – KR.mp3
UUID: 3ed85068-c19a-459b-bc25-0984310b8211
Teacher: Kyabje Rinpoche
Collection: Compendium of Valid Cognition
Date: 1993-09-03
Recorded at: Tibetan Buddhist Institute, Adelaide
Words: ~2,397
# Compendium of Valid Cognition 15b 1993-09-03
**Collection:** Rinpoche Recordings — Compendium of Valid Cognition
**Duration:** 48.4 minutes
**Words:** 2,395
**Model:** Deepgram Nova-3
**Corrections applied:** 1
**Transcribed:** 2026-02-27 22:14
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Quoting it from a verse by Śāntideva where he said that meditation is not simply having the body sit in one place, but it is the mind which needs to be placed in one place. Without the mind abiding single-pointedly upon its object, our meditation becomes pointless, it becomes powerless. We increase the ability of our mind to abide upon, to rest upon or abide upon a single object. So initially our meditation requires a great deal of effort. It’s very difficult.
And we proceed in our meditation today, expending this effort and working through the difficulty. And tomorrow it’s not as difficult as it was today. And the next day, the day after tomorrow, our meditation isn’t as difficult as it was the previous day, let us say. And the same is true as we proceed next week, next month, next year, that we can attain a higher level in our meditation and it becomes easier and less difficult, and we expend less effort to attain that same degree of stability within our mind. We can quickly develop that stability of mind after some time because the factors of mindfulness and awareness have been developed. And the same holds true for meditating on states such as love and compassion, the awakening heart, that we take as the object of observation living sentient beings.
We proceed in our meditation on developing compassion, observing living beings. But we begin with those who are dear to ourselves—our parents, our children, people who are extremely close to us—and developing compassion observing these living beings. And when that goes well, then we move on to our friends, observing our friends. We cultivate compassion toward them. Then when that is going well, we go on to observe strangers, developing compassion toward them.
And then when that goes well, we move on to our enemies until finally we have included all living beings within the object of our meditation, that is to say, those who we hold dear, strangers, and enemies. So we proceed in that order in the cultivation of great compassion, first developing compassion toward those who we hold close to ourselves, who we cherish and hold dear, then strangers and enemies. So it is through this accustoming process, through habituating ourselves and making effort through this process, that we can finally, through this process of accustoming, cultivating, we finally develop great compassion. And in this process of coming to development of great compassion, we build upon the ability that we have developed previously. Through the process of accustoming the mind, one needs to make less and less effort over the course of the development of compassion, that one develops an ability to generate this state such that one has to expend less and less effort as one proceeds.
So there is a building up. The previous meditations will facilitate the abilities of the subsequent meditations. So our previous efforts, the efforts that we expended previously, find benefit in our subsequent meditations, because it becomes less and less difficult for ourselves to proceed, to accustom our mind in the course of our meditation. So our previous efforts that we’ve put into a meditation make a benefit for the subsequent process of meditation. So this process of cultivating compassion, as has been described—though the amount of effort needed to generate compassion has been becoming less—still over the course of one’s cultivation up to this point one has had to make some effort.
But there reaches a point where, in fact, compassion arises effortlessly. Through having cultivated compassion through effort, there reaches a point where compassion then arises spontaneously. That is, merely upon seeing a living being, one without effort generates the awakening heart towards this person, this living being. By way of analogy, you know, when in some way we don’t like an enemy, by thinking about them again and again in the mind, churning over this person in our mind again and again and again, merely by seeing this person—we don’t have to use any reasons—just merely seeing them, anger arises within our mind. We’ve been habituated to anger throughout numerous rebirths, as likewise to attachment. And with respect to a particular individual, by again and again thinking of this person, we can arrive at the state where merely seeing this person, without having to take recourse to any reasoning, just the appearance of this person can generate anger in our mind. Vasubandhu says, Well, how are such states generated? It’s because we have not abandoned the afflictive emotions. On the contrary, we have habituated ourselves to the afflictive emotions, and the seeds of the afflictive emotions reside within our minds.
So on the one hand there are the seeds within our mind, and then on the other hand, or from the other side, we meet with the correct object. And upon meeting with the correct object, we generate anger or attachment. And then thirdly, there’s the factor of distorted conceptions which superimpose qualities upon the object. For example, superimposing the quality of enemy upon that which is not an enemy, or superimposing the state of one to be held dear upon one who is not. So it is a combination of these three factors: the seeds of the afflictive emotions within our mind, the various objects, and the superimposing conceptions.
So, in talking about these habituated states toward which we are habituated, we’ve been talking in terms of those afflictive emotions, negative components of mind. But the same holds true with respect to positive components of mind, those on the side in the area of Dharma, for example, the qualities of compassion or love, the awakening heart, wisdom realizing emptiness, these healthy states of mind which are able to overcome the faults of the mind, these excellent qualities of the mind—they can also be habituated to. So a great meditation master by the name Geshe Chekawa said, This mind, which is so full of faults, has one really excellent quality. And what is that really excellent quality? That is, whatever it trains in, the mind can integrate.
Whatever is said can be understood, whatever we meditate on can be completely cultivated. So whatever can be trained in, it can be integrated. So an analogy that we could use—a simple analogy would be learning how to type. Initially, it’s really quite difficult. We have to make a lot of effort.
We really have to think about what we’re doing, keep watching what we’re doing. Eventually through practice we get to the point where we can type effortlessly. We don’t even have to look at the keys. This final ability came about through previous training. The effort that we previously put in has brought about a result where now we can type almost effortlessly. We don’t have to make the same effort as we did previously. So that’s an example which you should be able to identify with. So an example which I can identify with is when I was memorizing texts. You know, at first it was really difficult, was really difficult just to pronounce the words of the text. I had to make—it was difficult and, let alone trying to remember them. So having to go over and over trying to memorize lines and they’d be lost and then I’d have to go back over them. And so there was all this great effort and great difficulty that had to be involved in the process of memorization. But you get to a point where you not only no longer have to make any effort, it just flows out when you recite the text. You don’t even have to think about what you’re reciting. You can look around and watch things while your mouth is reciting all these, what you’ve memorized. So there is no difficulty in memorizing 100, 200 pages. So this is one of the really excellent qualities of the mind, that things become easier upon accustoming the mind to its object.
This is what Śāntideva meant when he said that there is nothing which does not become easier upon customization or habituation, familiarization. So this is really quite useful for those who meditate, understanding that initially it’s necessary to make effort in the course of our meditation, but eventually the objects of our meditation become the very nature of the mind. They become integrated in the mind. So if we have good experience in our meditation, then we will enjoy meditation. That is to say, if we understand that subsequent meditation is not going to be as difficult as meditating previously, then we are going to enjoy our meditations.
If it did require the same effort each time, if our meditation did not build upon the previous meditation, then it would be purposeless. There would be no meaning to pursuing it. But understanding that everything becomes easier upon training, then there’s great meaning in maintaining our enthusiasm in our meditation. By developing healthy states of mind we can finally eliminate the various defects of our mind. If we cannot increase or expand the healthy states of our mind, then there’d be no way that we could ultimately eliminate the faults of the mind.
So the way we increase, expand our healthy states of mind, the method that we make use of is meditation. Again and again meditating on these healthy states is the means by which we increase them in our mind. Meditation means to accustom, to get used to, to habituate. This is what meditation means. So again and again, accustoming the mind to these healthy states, we increase the power of these positive factors of the mind, and consequently the negative factors of the mind, the power of the negative factors of the mind, decrease.
There is a syllogism which is set out in Compendium of Valid Cognition where it says that taking as a subject love and wisdom, etc., that in the context of the applications, they can be increased without limit. Why? Because of the dependence upon the cultivation of the previous seeds. In dependence upon the cultivation of previous seeds, subsequently they can be generated again. So the two applications which are being spoken of here are one, in terms of being able to definitely ascertain the object—yes, the application or the practice of being able to come to a definite ascertainment as to the meaning of the object. And then two is in the context of the two types of meditation—analytic meditation and stabilizing meditation. And along with effort one engages the object. One is able to engage the object. The point which is being made here is that these qualities, such as love, wisdom, etc., through the process of habituation, through cultivation in meditation and coming to a definite ascertainment as to the nature, that they can be generated without limit because one through their meditation is implanting seeds, potencies, which can be depended upon.
So in dependence upon previously cultivated seeds, one can later generate a more forceful state of these qualities. Therefore, there’s no reason why they cannot be developed without limit. So previously we established the existence of past and future lives. Now here, dependent upon this line of reasoning which seeks to set out the nature of the mind, we can use this type of reasoning to establish the existence of liberation and Buddhahood. By establishing the nature of the mind, we establish the existence of liberation and Buddhahood.
So we’ll stop there, but if you have some questions. If there’s still something more prominent that your awareness should be on, if, you know, more dominant, I think, rather than the primary—rather than—If there’s more dominant hearing and your awareness goes to that, if you’re aware of the hearing, hearing, hearing, and it’s still very dominant for a while or couple of minutes. And you’re thinking, oh, dear. How am I gonna get back to the rise and fall? And maybe you just—I just don’t get back to the rise and fall. I just stay here and here. And how do I get back to the rise and fall? Maybe I don’t know. I just won’t know the world.
Do you want to? Okay. Do you want to? Well, what is the primary object of it? I mean, what’s the right thing to do?
What are you doing? And what type of—what are you meditating? Are you meditating on mindfulness of the breathing, the rise and fall? Is that what you’re meditating on? Yeah. But the senses and whatever arises that’s most dominant, then you have to be aware of that. Or is that a different type of meditation? So what’s your question you have here? Question is, how do I get back to the rising and falling? How do you get back? If you could formulate it.
Really great. I mean, is there some reason that you can’t get back? Well, let me—Very briefly, is there some reason that you can’t do that? Are you saying there’s some reason that you can’t do that or something? It’s just that the hearing is more dominant and my awareness—
Partly. So mindfulness brings the mind back from the object—you know, from the distracted object to the object of meditation, rising and falling. Should you interrupt—I’ll interrupt. If you’re listening to the sound, then—What is the object of your meditation? What are you meditating on? What type of meditation are you—what are you meditating on? The rising and falling. So that’s your—So it’s just like a child who’s supposed to be studying but runs outside.
You have to go out and lead them back by the hand and take them back to their studies. Likewise, when the mind is distracted to an external object, it is mindfulness which goes out and takes the mind by the hand and brings it back to its object of meditation. So you have to bring the mind back to the object of meditation.