Audio recorded at Tibetan Buddhist Institute, Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 48-minute teaching, Kyabje Rinpoche takes on a philosophical objection to the possibility of limitless compassion training across lifetimes. An opponent argues that the mind, like a high jumper or boiling water, must have a ceiling. Rinpoche refutes both analogies by showing they misidentify their bases. A high jumper must expend constant effort to jump the same distance, but in meditation for compassion, effort decreases as the mind habituates—capacity expands while strain eases. Boiling water evaporates as heat increases; the trained mind does the opposite, expanding in wisdom and compassion as practice deepens. The teaching concludes with a practical meditation example: how mindfulness sustains concentration in an untrained mind. For serious practitioners with philosophical training.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 1993-09-03 – 15A – KR.mp3
UUID: ea2dca3a-999c-42aa-9deb-cf3ab83763ce
Teacher: Kyabje Rinpoche
Collection: Compendium of Valid Cognition
Date: 1993-09-03
Recorded at: Tibetan Buddhist Institute, Adelaide
Words: ~2,091
Cultivate the altruistic motivation of the awakened heart for ten minutes. In order to lead all living beings to a state of freedom from their suffering and where they have complete happiness. I must eliminate all my various faults and I must increase higher and higher and bring to consummation my excellent qualities. In order to achieve it, I’m going to listen to and examine with my reasoning and meditate upon the commentary which we are presently studying. And having done that, then I can be of vast benefit both to myself and to others.
According to a verse in Valid Cognition by Dharmakīrti in which we have been seeking to establish the existence of past and future lives because it has been necessary to establish future life in order to satisfy a protagonist who has said that we cannot develop great compassion through the process of accustoming ourselves to such a state because it would take more than one life to attain such a state and more than one life simply does not exist. There are no past and future lives. So therefore, in order to overcome this assertion of the protagonist, it’s necessary that we establish past and future lives. And having done that, now the protagonist still goes on to assert: though there may be in fact past and future lives, we cannot develop such compassion — we cannot develop compassion without end.
So in coming to understand what is meant here by the adversary, by the protagonist in saying that though we can accustom the mind to such a state over numbers of lives, we cannot increase compassion without end. We’re going to make use of two analogies. Distance jumping. So in coming to understand that the mind can be increased without end, we’re going to make use of two analogies. The first of these two analogies is I think high jumping, and the second is boiling of water.
As we proceed in boiling water, the water doesn’t increase, but in fact it boils away, it evaporates until it completely dries up. So using those two analogies. So it is this protagonist who is putting forth these two analogies, saying that the mind cannot be developed without limit. And he points as his first proof that the mind cannot be So he said the mind cannot be developed limitlessly, for example, qualities as love and compassion and wisdom. And he makes, in order to prove his case, makes he use of two analogies.
The first is in the analogy of high jumping. He says, you know, initially through training that a person can learn how to jump and can progressively improve in the height that they’re able to jump. Can, through vigorous training, can jump higher and higher and higher. But there’s an upward limit to the height at which they will eventually be able to achieve, achieve. That they cannot keep progressing limitlessly.
There is a measurable limit to the height that they’re going to be able to train themselves to jump. Likewise, though initially in the cultivation of love and wisdom and compassion, we can develop, we can cultivate these, we can accustom ourselves to these states, we can develop them. But in the same way that there is an upward limit to the ability and the high jumper, likewise there is an upward limit to the development of wisdom, love and compassion that they cannot be developed limitlessly. So then the second analogy which the protagonist is setting forth in trying to establish his case that the mind cannot be developed indefinitely. And he says, in the case of water, we’re boiling water.
Cannot, there is an upper limit to how hot we can get the water. We can keep increasing the heat, but as we increase the heat applied to the water, the water is boiling away. Proportionately the water is boiling away until the water is completely dried up. We simply cannot keep increasing the heat. There is an upward limit to where we can increase the heat up to before the water will be boiled away.
The heat cannot be increased without limit, and the heat of the water cannot be increased without limit. Likewise, the qualities of love and wisdom and compassion, as they increase, the parallel to this in terms of the analogy would be as they increase, the mind would be decreasing. As the heat of the water increases, the water begins to decrease. Likewise, as we develop more and more wisdom and compassion, the mind itself would decrease in a like manner. So therefore there is an upward limit.
The wisdom and love of the mind cannot be developed without limit. The mind can in fact be developed limitlessly — immeasurably. Its qualities can be increased but here it’s been argued that in fact they cannot. So the text answers the protagonist assertion saying, We do accept your analogies as being in fact the case.
There is an upper limit to how high one can jump and the heat of the water can only be increased to a certain upper limit. But your analogies are not applicable to the development of the mind. Though statements are true, they are not true analogies with respect to situation of the mind. For example, with respect to your analogy of increasing the heat of the water. The heat of the water is dependent.
It depends upon the water. The basis of the heat of the water is the water. Using this, and this is a dissimilar basis to that of mind, where the wisdom and compassion are the qualities which are dependent upon the basis of mind. These two bases, the water and are dissimilar. Why?
Because they do not have the same degree of stability. The basis are different in terms of their stability. So they are dissimilar bases and how is this explained? The basis of dependence is the mind. That which depends are the qualities, for example, wisdom and compassion.
That through meditation we can cultivate the mind, we can increase our wisdom and compassion. But the basis does not, in fact, decrease as compassion and love and wisdom increase. In fact, the mind itself increases. The basis upon which these depend does not diminish but they in fact increase themselves, the mind itself increases. These qualities of wisdom, love, and compassion can be increased because they can be developed because they are generated qualities which are in the very nature of the mind itself.
Therefore, though as they increase the mind itself is increasing. That they are that that they they are in the very nature of the mind, in the qualities of the mind. Where on the other hand, as the heat of the water is increased, the water itself decreases. So the basis, these two bases that you’re using your analogy that of the mind and water are quite dissimilar. One increases in the course of development and the other in the case of increasing the heat of the water, the base diminishes.
So your analogy of the making use of the heat of the water in disproving the upper limits of increasing of the mind is not acceptable. So then with respect to the first analogy where it said, we are asserting that it is correct that one cannot increase one’s ability to jump higher and higher without limit, in fact the love and wisdom of the mind can be developed without limit. This needs to be proved. Why? Because you cannot use this as an analogy disproving that the mind cannot be developed without limit because these are dissimilar.
So your analogy between broad jumping or distance jumping. Do you broad call jumping? In America we call it broad jumping. Distant jumping? Broad jumping.
Broad jumping and the development of the mind limitlessly, they’re dissimilar and therefore they cannot be used in your objection. Why? Because in the case of in the case first the case of the development of wisdom and love within the mind through cultivating these qualities in meditation, initially it’s necessary that we make effort in the development in generating these states. And we apply ourselves again and again to generating these states again and again. And as one proceeds in again and again developing and generating these states, then there develops a potency or an ability whereby these minds can arise with less and less effort as was needed compared to previously.
That the ability of the mind is such that less effort is needed to be expended in order to generate a loving state or a wisdom state of mind as it was previously. So there is less effort needed to again and again generate the love and compassion. It becomes easier and easier to generate these states. Therefore, these can be increased increased limitlessly. Limitlessly.
On On the the other other hand, hand, when when we’re we’re talking talking in training in broad jumping, Therefore, jumping. One must make effort to jump to a certain distance. No matter how many times one jumps that same distance, one must make the same effort to jump that same distance. If one makes less effort to jump that distance, one will jump a less of a distance. If one makes less effort in jumping, one will jump less of a distance.
In order to jump that same distance, one must consistently make the same effort in order to jump that same distance. Therefore there is a limit to how far one can jump because there effort is there is a limit in how much effort one can make. So your analogy is not similar as to the development of mind. So what are we saying is the defect in this proponent’s analogy in terms of the limitlessness? We say that one cannot develop the ability to jump at a limitless distance.
That the effort which is used again and again to jump a particular distance is not accumulative. We don’t develop an accumulative ability to where we can decrease the effort needed to jump that same distance in subsequent jumps. We don’t develop an accumulative ability whereby we need to expend less and less effort to jump the same distance in subsequent jumps. If that were the case, then we should be able to get to the place where we just have to lift our foot and we can jump long distances. But that never happens.
So your example is dissimilar to the nature of the mind and the mind can be developed limitlessly. Why is that? We have to come to understand the nature of the mind, entity of the mind. This is extremely useful in meditation. So for example, if we were going to meditate on compassion for say for fifteen minutes and we have had no previous experience in meditation.
So we would have to we’d have to expend a great deal of effort. It would be extremely difficult. We’d have to do a lot of thinking in order to to in the course of our meditation. So in the course of our meditation, we make make use of factors such as mindfulness which keep the mind from straying onto other objects than the one which we are seeking to observe. And we make use of wisdom, we make use of meditative stabilization, and these are very, we have to expend a lot of energy.
They’re very difficult to proceed with in our meditation. And because of our lack of accustoming habituation to this process, and a lack of mindfulness, our mind tends to stray to other objects. So it takes a great deal of effort to keep the mind on the object that we’re seeking to meditate. For example, it takes our wisdom consciousness is examining a particular object of observation and trying to analyze it. This requires a great deal of effort to keep the mind on that.
That which the mental factor which aids in this process is the factor of awareness or introspection, which tells us whether we’re on the object or not. And all of these, this involves a great deal of effort in the process of meditation. So even in the course of meditating for five or ten minutes, if our meditation is to go well, have to bring together a variety of causes and conditions and a variety of mental factors and meditative stabilization and wisdom, awareness and mindfulness. And all of this requires effort on our parts.