Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Diana Taylor teaches the foundational mechanisms of Buddhist practice in this 45-minute retreat session, grounding spiritual development in six universal learning processes: hearing, thinking, mindfulness, introspection, effort, and familiarity. She illustrates how these powers work using the example of learning to drive, then expands to the six perfections—generosity, morality, patience, enthusiastic perseverance, single-pointed concentration, and discriminating wisdom—as practical frameworks for cultivating compassion. She walks through each perfection concretely: giving as intention, not just material goods; morality as conflict resolution; patience as acceptance of hardship; and concentration as mental rehearsal that conditions response to real-life stress. Throughout, Taylor emphasizes that spiritual development is imprinting habits on the mind through repetition, using sports psychology and workplace anxiety as contemporary examples. She closes with a parable by Thich Nhat Hanh about a river learning to observe her own nature, reinforcing the theme of mindful self-awareness as the path of practice.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 07 Ret..mp3
UUID: d1c9fcab-c8e7-4b2b-a99c-e96fc9f29524
Teacher: Diana Taylor
Collection: Retreat (Diana Taylor)
Date: 1997 (exact day not recorded)
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 45.4 minutes
Words: ~5,510
Quite small and adventitious which somehow or other opens the mind up. But that’s because we’ve had teachers in past lives in any case. But certainly we need something which will open the mind up, which will give it a structure to work with and a way of seeing beyond where we’re seeing at the moment. But having heard about something then we need to think about it. That’s pretty obvious if you’ve tried to teach anybody anything.
If they don’t stop and think about what you’re teaching, you say look this has gone in one ear and out the other. So rather than have it go in one ear and out the other, we get it stuck between the ears and we think about it. That’s fairly straightforward. Having thought about it, which means integrating that into our own framework, the framework that exists at the moment, Then we need to develop the quality of mindfulness, being aware. And at this stage we start to think also in terms of practicing something over a period of time.
So we hear about it, we think about it and then we begin to observe how this actually works or fails to work in our ordinary day to day life. That’s what mindfulness is about. Just watching ourselves on a day to day basis and seeing what works, what doesn’t work. Being aware. Mindfulness in itself is dependent on introspection.
That introspection is the quality of self awareness, inner awareness. It’s not just mindfulness in the sense of saying this is what is happening but it is a quality of awareness which says this is working or this is not working. That quality of introspection. Then beyond that we have the quality of effort which doesn’t mean necessarily creating a big strain. It doesn’t mean effort pushing beyond our capacities, but it means effort working within our capacities.
Effort that comes from the motivation to change and seeing that there is some sort of fruit involved in creating change. And finally there’s the quality of familiarity. In other words, this has now become so deeply ingrained in our mind that we’re not even thinking about it anymore. Through the initial hearing and then through the thinking and the mindfulness and the introspection and the effort, things become ingrained on our mind. They become habits or they become imprints is the other way to describe it.
So whether we talk in Western terms as being habits or conditioned reflexes if you like, conditioning or whether we talk in imprints which then takes us into the whole area of karma and karmic imprints. These two things are the same. The conditioning that we understand and know about from Western psychology is the process by which karmic imprints are created on the mind. Familiarity means we have created a karmic imprint so that we start doing things by second nature. So initially to have compassion, to have deep compassion, might be something quite alien.
But through hearing about it and thinking well maybe it is a good idea to be compassionate. Maybe it’s not such a good idea to be stuck in this rational frame of mind because it leaves me isolated and alone. So then we become mindful and thinking well you know in this particular situation I was compassionate, in this situation I was not compassionate. And through introspection becoming aware and seeing what the effects are of practicing this. And through effort.
So through all these things gradually the mind becomes imprinted with the concept of compassion. And we behave in that way, quite naturally behave in that way. So the imprinting of anything is exactly the same as imprinting how to drive a car for example. You hear think about it, you get in the car, you actually do it. And you do it over and over again and we do it so often that in the end when you get into the car it’s no longer something that you have got to work your way through.
You just get in the car, you find you are driving the car before you have even thought about what it is that you’ve done. For that reason I refused to teach my children how to drive because I wasn’t quite sure how I did drive. It wasn’t that I crashed my car, was just that everything had become automatic. And if I tried to stop and think about it, I got stuck and couldn’t remember what to do next. So I sent them off to somebody else to learn how to drive.
These six powers, although they are listed in terms of developing calm abiding, are actually general ways in which we learn and which we develop. So we can utilise those. But in addition to that, I want to mention the six perfections because these six perfections give us the basis on which we develop compassion itself. We can’t be compassionate fully without starting at ground base. The first of these six perfections is the perfection of giving and it’s very easy to see how this ties in with compassion.
It’s the wish to give which is the important part. It’s the intention to give. If we have material gifts to give then that’s fine. But if we don’t have material gifts, even the desire to give is something which is very potent. And there’s the story told of the little boy who came to the Buddha with a bowl of sand because he had nothing else to give.
But the mind of this little boy was a mind of wanting to present a bowl of gold to the Buddha and because that mind was so strongly in that little boy, that little boy grew up and achieved enlightenment and all that sort of stuff. The point is it’s this wish or if you want to go to the bible, the story of the widow with her mite. She had only a tiny amount to give but she gave with a very open heart. So the wish to give there was there very strongly. So there’s the giving of material gifts.
There’s the giving of our knowledge and understanding, giving of teaching, also very important. We’re doing this with our children all the time. We’re doing it with our friends when our friends are stuck. If we have some sort of awareness, this desire to help them through something which has helped ourselves. This is an act of giving as well.
And also there’s that quality of giving what you can give now and making prayers that you can give much more later on, that also develops a mind of generosity. The second perfection is the perfection of morality. By practicing morality we are putting ourselves in a situation where we lessen the degree of conflict between ourselves and between other people because we have a basis for making decisions when there is some sort of conflict between our own needs and someone else’s needs. And the basis of that decision is morality. Morality includes avoiding breaking one’s vows.
So that those of you who have taken vows of any sort as Buddhists, avoiding breaking those vows is obviously a basis for morality. Things like no killing and no stealing, no sexual misconduct, all those sorts of things, which are also there the same sort of things that are there in the Ten Commandments and are there in most other religions, which are the ways of saying, This makes life easier in a community. That’s the basis of those vows. Then there is the aspect of being of benefit to other people rather than being of disbenefit. This is another way of looking at morality.
And when we start looking at being of benefit to other people then obviously it overlaps with generosity. All these perfections overlap with each other in any case. So things like helping people when they’re sick helping people who are ignorant of the dharma, of wisdom, Helping people while remembering their kindness. That is another way of opening our minds to compassion when we see that all beings in one way or another have been kind to us at one time or another. There’s meditations on that which some of you may have done which we haven’t had time to do this weekend which are also very powerful ways of generating compassion.
Helping people who are in misery. Whatever the form of misery is. Whether we’re helping through our kindness, whether we’re helping through giving material things. Helping people who are poor, helping those who are without a home or a country. It’s a pretty straightforward basis of social work type stuff.
Raising the attitude of sentient beings. Includes consoling and encouraging those who are depressed or in misery. That’s for all psychotherapists. Helping those who are on the true path, encouraging them in order to keep them from straying. In other words, practicing morality and generosity towards our Dharma friends, our spiritual friends, having that open heartedness towards them and a quality of patience towards them when they stuff it up.
Because you can be sure we are going to stuff it up too. Need to have a certain degree of humility there. Helping those who are on the wrong path, not by sitting them down and telling them they are stupid, but simply being different is a very powerful way to do that. But sometimes it is important to point out to people the results of what it is that they are doing. The negative outcome of their behaviour.
They may not listen to you or they may not say they are going to listen to you. But if they don’t have that knowledge at all then they don’t have a basis for making a decision from their own side. The eleventh one is helping sentient beings by means of supernormal powers. Like if you’ve got supernormal powers, use them! I’m afraid I’m not very good on that one.
The third one is the practice of patience. There are three aspects to the practice of patience. You think of it, patience is also a form of generosity. It’s a form of mental generosity. The first one is not taking revenge if somebody harms you.
This is patience in the face of anger, patience in the face of our enemies, people who are trying to steal from you or hurt you in some way. Patience. Oh, sorry. Three points under patience or the three perfection so far? No.
That’s just not taking revenge if someone harms Oh, I think that that was Oh, right. Right. Yes. Not taking revenge if somebody harms you. So that was the heading and I was trying to explain it.
The second one is about willingly taking on hardships while walking on our spiritual path. It actually says while practicing Dharma here but that means while walking on our spiritual path. And the third one is distinguishing right from wrong understanding. That’s having patience with our ability to learn, I guess. The third one is distinguishing right from wrong understanding.
So in terms of the I think this is the third one. I’ve lost track of where I am in the book. Yes I know I’m up to patience but I’m not quite sure whether the As and Bs are with two or three. Oh it’s under two. Expanding two to some extent.
So number two was the willingly taking on hardships. Yes, so this is the acceptance of physical suffering which is things like working to be able to sit in the meditation posture for a reasonable period of time. It doesn’t mean to say that you should force yourself so that you don’t like meditation but maybe taking up some sort of yoga practice so that you are able to do that. Having the patience with yourself to do that. Training the mind to constantly observe the Dharma.
Not letting it slip into idle things, other things, insignificant things. Getting out there with Pardon? Getting out the meditation. Yes, that’s a good one. Disregarding all luxuries and comforts while accepting whatever is available.
This one is actually quite subtle in many ways An example of this is somebody who was wanting to do retreat at the Centre and he wanted silence. Well, it’s pretty quiet up at the Atitia Centre because we’re out in the bush but there’s a road and where there is a road you get cars and trucks. There is also a train line about a kilometer or further away. But the train goes on it twice a day and it blows its whistle. He was getting really frustrated because there are these cars and trucks and then twice a day there was the whistle of a train.
It didn’t matter to him that the birds were quite noisy. It didn’t matter to him if the wind was blowing but it mattered to him about the cars and the trains because these were mechanical things, you see, whereas the birds part of the bush. So his mind was saying, I want things to be a certain way and they weren’t a certain way. He got quite disturbed until he realized it was a rather foolish thing to do. Disregarding all luxuries and comforts in the gross sense, it’s easy to see it.
Sometimes if your cushion isn’t quite right or there’s a bit of noise around or happens to be playing some rock music next door and you can hear the thump, thump, thump of the bass. These are some of the things which just happen. I’m saying, Okay, that’s what happens and let me get on with trying to practice my meditation and get on with whatever it is that I’m doing. Taking on the sufferings that come in the course of saving lives of other people. So here again is a combination of the generosity and the suffering.
We hear many, many stories of people who do this, who suffer severe burns for example because they’ve gone into a fire to bring somebody creature out of a fire. Trying to abstain from trivial actions which again is a quality of being patient towards oneself and saying, Okay, I don’t want to get trapped into this again. Let me just bring myself out of it. So that was number two. Number three is the acceptance of hardships that arise due to one’s practice of the Dharma.
Well in some cases we’ve covered that in two in any case. As I say, there’s a lot of overlap. These headings aren’t mutually exclusive. So I think we’ll move on to number four, which is enthusiastic perseverance. Sounds great, doesn’t it?
Or effort. Joyful effort, that’s been also translated as. To quote from With enthusiastic perseverance one is so totally absorbed in the object of meditation that the pains are not even noticed. It is not something inherent but one can train oneself to accomplish it by making the meditation period short at first and by making the practice as interesting as possible. So this aspect of being able to ignore pain does come with concentration and you might have experienced that yourself when you have been concentrating on something intently.
You lose awareness of the pain. But apart from that, the enthusiastic perseverance means generating the motivation, seeing that there is something powerful to be gained from it and using the energy from that positive motivation to keep on going. So it’s this enthusiastic perseverance which allows us to be patient, allows us to be generous and to practice morality. So it’s this which overcomes laziness and procrastination and things like that. Patience is number three.
There’s generosity, morality, patience. This is enthusiastic perseverance which is number four. And here’s another quote. Enthusiastic perseverance should be like a stream, study and without a break. Some people begin with great enthusiasm and energy but after a few years abandon their practice.
To guard against this, do not have expectations of immediate intuitive understanding from meditation. Intuitive insight arises only after the object has been understood intellectually and it becomes a part of the mind. As with bodhicitta whenever the object arises naturally and without effort, then intuitive understanding has been attained. In other words, when it has become an imprint on the mind. The fifth one is the single point concentration.
Now this is mindfulness applied with incredible strength, the single point of concentration. It means being at the moment when we try and hold our mind on something, we hold it for a fraction of a second or a few seconds and then it weakens and our mind disappears and goes off somewhere else. Single pointed concentration is about being firmly locked onto the object of concentration without any change until you consciously choose to come out of a meditation. And there are three things which arise from this. One is the quality of physical and mental bliss which also helps the enthusiastic perseverance side of course.
The second one is intuitive understanding. And the third one is a greater ability to help sentient beings. It’s not hard to see how these things would arise out of ability to keep the mind steady on one particular thing. Helping other sentient beings. Compassion.
Tibetans are very good at these lists. That’s why I need a book. I can never remember which goes into which list. And the sixth one is discriminating wisdom. Sorry?
Discriminating wisdom. So by that we mean understanding how things work at a conventional level of existence. That is the cause and effect that happens in this ordinary material world. About how relationships function. These are different aspects of discriminating wisdom.
The second aspect of discriminating wisdom is that which understands the ultimate reality or the non existence of phenomena emptiness. If we are able to fully understand that, that is of the most radical, probably the most radical thing that the mind is able to do, is to come to an awareness that the way in which we understand reality is flawed. It seems to be okay and everybody around us confirms that it’s okay because they live in the same way but in fact it’s not. It’s a bit like as if we’re peasants at the age where everybody believed the earth was flat and along comes somebody like Geshe-la and says no the earth is round and we say no no don’t you, you’re crazy. It can’t be, the earth is flat.
Look I can see it’s flat. There’s no sense of the earth being round. These days we know the earth is round because we can get in a plane and we can travel halfway around it and we can keep on going and come back to where we started from. In those days it wasn’t possible to do that. So the conventional wisdom was the earth is flat and that made good common sense and it required a lot of effort and a lot of understanding of the subtlety of the mathematical formulations to be able to understand that the earth was in fact round a sphere and not flat.
Similarly, for us to be able to understand that phenomena is not this hard, solid, permanent, self existent reality that we think it is, we have to actually work very hard because are not used to understanding it and we don’t normally get that understanding confirmed for us. But that is the second aspect of discriminating wisdom. The third one is knowing how to benefit sentient beings with the most appropriate means. Skillful action. As I say, it’s not very difficult to see how these six perfections overlap and tie in with each other in any case.
And as we develop one, then the others begin to develop two. So in the process of trying to develop compassion, the more we develop the generosity, the more we develop patience, the more we develop morality, the three basic ones, then the more we are opening our minds and we are more free to be compassionate. Because in the process of developing these we are also acting in ways which are against the working of the ego grasping mind. Generosity is not something that the ego grasping mind wants to know about. Morality is not something the ego grasping mind wants to know about and nor is patience.
So as we work at these very, very basic levels then we start to develop our compassion as well because they are loosening up and letting go of that ego grasping mind. Now these are the very ordinary nitty gritty, day by day aspects of spiritual practice. Those three main ones: the generosity, the patience and the morality. So if you don’t like meditating, you find meditating hard, you are uncomfortable about sitting on a cushion, you can develop your compassion in a very potent way simply by practicing those three perfections. As they develop, then the others start to come into play.
As we develop generosity and patience and morality, then people enjoy being with us because we are doing things which help to make them happy. So we become happier too because people like us more. Still lots of ego grasping but at least people like us more and at least we’re practising these particular very basic things. And then as we try to extend this out it becomes obvious that we need to develop more wisdom. To develop more wisdom we need the single point concentration.
And so it becomes very natural to say, Okay, well I’ve got to sit and meditate. And when you know you’ve got to sit and meditate, that that is one of the profound ways to do it, it’s not so hard to do it. When you think, Well I ought to meditate because I’ve been told I should meditate, it’s hard. But when you’re simply wanting to give and you need to be able to be quiet to know how to give, it’s not hard at all. So then that enthusiastic perseverance is automatically there.
So all these things fit in with each other. Much of what we’re doing when we’re meditating is rehearsing the situations that we think we’re going to meet. We’re practicing and rehearsing them. And the more we practice them, the more we rehearse them, the more likely we are to act in that way when we actually meet those situations. That’s the the fundamental basis of sports psychology.
Fundamental basis of performance psychology for people in the performing arts is just rehearsing mentally over and over again the things that they are to perform so that when they actually get into the situation of having to run the race or sit up and play the concerto then they’ve already rehearsed it so much in their mind that it becomes an action which their mind naturally follows. So the more we meditate, more we rehearse, then the more likely we are to behave in that particular way. So it’s really very simple. Not hard at all. Any questions?
Yeah, well they are opposing factors and one of the reasons I suspect the youth suicide rate is up is because of the predominance of those sorts of negative factors. So if it’s possible to make a change in the attitudes of senior management then that’s one way of doing it. But in terms of one’s own being within a workplace where there’s a lot of stress, Utilizing the meditation period to visualize yourself acting with a quality of calmness and clarity within that situation. Just as in sports psychology the athlete will imagine himself or herself within the stress and tension of the race and imagine themselves going through it and dealing with all the problems that arise, skillfully. When you are doing your meditation, visualizing yourself back at work and visualizing yourself dealing with these situations skillfully and with a mind which remains calm and not tense.
So then it becomes more likely when you are in the actual situation that in fact that you will remain calm and not tense. It doesn’t guarantee it because you have got to work at these sorts of things. But it will make it more likely. It’s the same principle in dealing with exam anxiety. When I was at Monash I had quite a few students suffering from exam anxiety and we just take them through visualising going through the exam until they could visualise sitting for the exam without the anxiety arising.
That could have quite a profound effect on somebody who is totally freaked out on exams and is then able to go back and sit down and do the exams. So just that mental rehearsal in itself can be very powerful. Meditation is a form of mental rehearsal. That’s one way of looking at it. Oh definitely!
Yes, definitely. Anything like that. Sorry? Anything that freaks you out. Yes.
Anything that freaks you out. Yes. Deconditioning phobic responses. Same technique. Any other questions on that?
Understanding of the nature of reality is probably the extreme end point of that, where there’s the right understanding and the wrong understanding. The wrong understanding is the conventional understanding of reality. The right understanding is the understanding that is aware and realizes the emptiness of it. But also there’s right and wrong understanding in terms of our behaviour. Something like power would be a good example where it is conceived to be something good but in fact it’s a wrong understanding.
The right understanding is an understanding which sees everybody as being equal in the sense that we are all wanting to avoid suffering, are all wanting to attain happiness. And power is contrary to that. So if we get caught up in a sense of power and say, Right, when I am powerful then I can be compassionate, that’s a wrong understanding in the sense that by working in that way and by generating power we are generating a mind which is going against compassion. So once we attain that power, if we attain it through those means, then we are very unlikely to have a compassionate mind. So the intention might start off as being a good intention but because of wrong understanding it all gets stuffed up.
Well, the definition of right and wrong is whether right things develop our spiritual path, wrong things go contrary to it. That’s the definition of right and wrong. In order to know these, we need to have our minds opened in some way. Then we go back to this hearing, thinking, mindfulness, introspection. Those six powers.
I need to understand more. So we go and read books and we come to teachings. We understand more, we are hearing more, we think about it, we assimilate it into ourselves and say how does that work in my situation in this particular context? What does it mean to me? And then when you’re in that context, being mindful of it.
Gradually through using those six powers we develop that until we get to the point where it’s just ingrained in us to act in that way. This is why compassion compassion is the intention to help. With that we need to be able to act skillfully so that it is in fact a helpful action and not a destructive action. So the compassion needs to be tempered by wisdom. Part of that wisdom is the wisdom that knows ourselves and knows our own limitations.
Which is why, in talking about generosity, it makes the point about if you can’t give when you want to be able to give, making prayers that you have the necessary realizations some stage where you are able to do that. That recognizes that at the moment you can’t do that. But the key part to your question is the bringing of wisdom into the acting of the compassion. So there are many situations where we want to relieve suffering where we might in fact do something which is more destructive. For example, one of my daughters was born with a hernia.
So the doctor said, right, she’s going to need an operation to have this hernia fixed up because if she doesn’t when she’s pregnant then that can rip the abdominal muscles and she could lose the baby and so on and so forth. So here am I with a perfectly healthy child except for a small hernia saying to myself do I put this child through the suffering of an operation in case she might have this? Or do I do this now when she’s going to get over it quickly so that when she’s pregnant twenty years later it’s not going to matter. So what is the wisdom in this sort of case? What I did in that particular case was to take her off to the hospital at the age of two and she had the hernia repaired.
But I can remember feeling absolutely terrible about leaving her there knowing that within a few hours she was going to be in pain. But yet the wisdom, in so far as I had wisdom, in so far as my knowledge and understanding was said, this is more compassionate than just not doing anything at this particular time. Compassion doesn’t necessarily mean giving people what they want at any time that they want it because that does not have the quality of wisdom. Wisdom is the wisdom which knows what it is which is going to bring happiness to a person. And if we are talking about ultimate happiness that is distinct from a temporary feeling good, then it is the wisdom which knows how this person can move along a spiritual path.
Sometimes we need to give people a good kick in the backside for them to move along their spiritual path. Sometimes we are to say this is enough, you have to take responsibility for yourself. And in that way they begin to become open to the destructiveness of their behaviour. So it’s not easy. The hard part of our compassion is having this wisdom.
Knowing the wisdom to act. Yes. So that’s the wisdom aspect. Compassion is not always kind and gentle. It’s kind but it’s not always gentle.
Well, as I say, this is where the wisdom is the hard part. If we’re Bodhisattvas, we know whether the kick in the butt is going to do the right thing. But since we’re not, we don’t know. So we have to act with the wisdom at this moment knowing that our wisdom is limited. So at that point when we know our wisdom is limited, we can take refuge at that point.
And the deeper our connection with our spiritual teacher and the deeper our connection with our spiritual path, the more potent that taking refuge will be. And the more possibilities of acting intuitively in a way which is actually going to be of benefit even though we can’t work it out logically. Yes. That’s a pretty dangerous thing to say that. And again we can’t say that unless we have some sort of clairvoyance so that we do know.
And we’re not going to have that quality of clairvoyance unless we’ve developed a single point of concentration and developed the wisdom as well. So when we start seeing these dilemmas which arise because of our limitations, that urgency to continue with the meditation practice and develop that gives us the energy to keep on going because it becomes so alarmingly clear that we don’t have the wisdom to do these things and that we are not strong enough to have the compassion which is necessary. We simply haven’t developed it. And so an urgency arises. This urgency is the basis of this enthusiastic perseverance.
That’s enough of the preaching side, I think. I’m gonna read you a story. This is a story by Thich Nhat Hanh who is a Vietnamese Buddhist from the book Peace is Every Step: The Path of Mindfulness in Everyday Life. Potent title. And this story is called The River.
River. I don’t think my renunciation was that bad. What are you projecting? No, it’s called the river. Once upon a time there was a beautiful river, finding her way among the hills and the forests and the meadows.
She began by being a joyful stream of water, a spring always dancing and singing as she ran down from the top of the mountain. She was very young at the time and as she came to the lowland she slowed down. She was thinking about going to the ocean. As she grew up she learned to look beautiful, winding gracefully amongst the hills and the meadows. One day she noticed the clouds within herself.
Clouds of all sorts of colors and forms. She did nothing during these days but chase after clouds.