Audio recorded at Tibetan Buddhist Institute, Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 45-minute teaching, Kyabje Rinpoche opens with striking practical wisdom: retreat meditation pauses at sunrise, noon, and sunset because demons actively interfere with practitioners at these times. He develops this into teachings on the fifth and sixth bhūmis—spiritual grounds where concentration and wisdom mature—and explains the six perfections (generosity, ethics, patience, effort, concentration, wisdom) as methods for systematically eliminating the three root afflictions: attachment, hatred, and ignorance. Each perfection is a practical tool working from surface manifestations toward root elimination. The vivid metaphor of ripening fruit in the sun illustrates this gradual progression of purification. A closing Q&A on joyous effort explains why genuine enthusiasm grounded in understanding a practice’s benefits matters far more than mere discipline. Pitched at serious practitioners already familiar with Mahāyāna Buddhist philosophy.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 1991-04-18 – 8B – KR.mp3
UUID: 129f9775-e67f-4410-90f0-ddbd7f66599d
Teacher: Kyabje Rinpoche
Collection: Entering the Middle Way
Date: 1991-04-18
Recorded at: Tibetan Buddhist Institute, Adelaide
Words: ~2,120
Retreat, when they have the tradition whereby in retreat when they rise up early in the morning and they have a session, but they stop their session when the sun is actually rising. At sunrise they stop their session and they do not meditate at that time. After that they have another session, but also they stop the session at noon. They do not have a session at noon time. And also then they go on in the afternoon to have a session, but they also stop and do not have a session when sun is setting.
Then they do not meditate at sunrise, noon, and and sunset. And this is because the demons are very active at these times, that they are looking towards those who are practicing the Dharma out of their attachment and hatred for these and they try to create interferences for anyone who is practicing Dharma at these particular times. So this is in the meditation deity of Heruka. Heruka is in consort with consort and is standing upon two demons, Jitsama and the black one. And these are the demons and these are this is the overcoming of these demonic forces which act to interfere with those who are seeking to practice the Dharma and attain liberation that they that by their power, they are able to overcome these demonic forces and send out various emanations in order to overcome them in the world.
And then it goes on to say that his concentration excels, and this is to say that the fifth grounder excels at all of those in his concentration who are beneath him, the fourth grounder and below. And he attains a great skill in the knowledge of the subtle nature of the truth. Here the truth refers to his becoming a master of developing the wisdom, realizing these coarse and subtle presentations of the four noble truths. So, with respect to the four noble truths, generally we talk about two truths, the ultimate truth and the conventional truth. In terms of conventional truth, we can go on to explain the conventional truth into that which is to be abandoned and that which is to be cultivated.
And the true sufferings and true sources of sufferings are to be abandoned and true cessation and true path leading to cessation are to be cultivated. So, with respect to the Four Noble Truths there is a coarse and subtle presentation. And in terms of the category of texts of Abhidharma or knowledge texts, this presentation is considered a coarse presentation of Four Noble Truths. In terms of the Prāsaṇgika Madhyamaka school and the present text, the entering into the middle way presents a subtle presentation of the Four Noble Truths. And this, the fifth grounder, has become an expert in both the subtle and coarse presentations of the Four Noble Truths developing extremely skilled wisdom with respect to it.
So the fifth grounder has become expert with respect to the perfection of meditative concentration. And the interference with the development of concentration are the subtle faults of laxity and excitement, distraction, laxity and distraction. And having overcome these, are not completely overcome prior to this time, the fifth grounder becomes an expert with respect to the perfection of meditative concentration. So this we have explained.
We’ve explained the first five grounds, and these five grounds are associated with the first of the five perfections, the perfection of generosity, ethics, tolerance, effort, and now meditative concentration. So in Candrakīrti here in his entering into the middle way, first is presented the first five perfections. And these he has presented as a supplement to the presentation in explaining the practices of the First Five Perfections. He has composed in such a way that his explanation is considered a supplement to the presentation of Nāgārjuna’s presentation within the Precious Garland. Nāgārjuna also explains the five perfections in his Precious Garland, and this present presentation is to act as a supplement to Nāgārjuna’s presentation.
The sixth ground takes up the perfection of wisdom, and here Candrakīrti is commentating on Nāgārjuna’s text, Prajñā Mula, or Fundamental Wisdom, where there is a very detailed explanation of emptiness. And so in the sixth chapter, Candrakīrti is commentating on Nāgārjuna’s fundamental wisdom. So, the sixth chapter will take up the sixth perfection, the perfection of wisdom. This is an extremely extensive explanation of emptiness and mainly in terms of the Prāsaṇgika Madhyamaka school, but also the presentations of the Great Exposition School, Sūtra School, the Mind Only School, and the Autonomy Middle Way School. So these six perfections represent the collective practices of the great vehicle.
I didn’t understand a word. I didn’t remember, she was explaining what the word meant. The word meant ripen. So the way the individual’s, one’s own mind stream is ripened is through the, by means of the, by the method of the six perfections. The way that we ripen the mind streams of others is by means of the four means of cultivating the minds of disciples.
What we mean by ripening ripening one’s mind, one’s own mind, is that we develop a healthy attitude, that we have an excellent attitude, that we have our mind becomes very smooth as opposed to being rough. So when we that, when we speak about unripened mind, we mean a mind which is very rough and unhealthy. When we talk about an unripened mind, we mean a mind which is very rough, which has many negative attitudes, many destructive attitudes. It’s a type such as harmful intentions, various gross types of afflictions attachment, hatred, delusion, pride. On the other hand, when the roughness of the mind is subdued and the mind is ripened, the mind becomes very smooth.
It becomes developing very constructive and healthy types of attitudes. To easily understand what we mean, generally we abbreviate the afflictive emotions down to three, condense them down to three, the attachment, hatred, and delusion. And these are very rough states of mind. They’re very negative states of mind. So, initially we ceased the manifesting of these three afflictive emotions of attachment, hatred, and ignorance.
And then finally we eliminate them from the very root, and the method that we make use of in order to achieve this end is the six perfections. So, the necessity for the practice of the six perfections is in order to make use of them as methods to eliminate these afflictive emotions within one’s own mind. Not for the sake of we practice the six perfections, not for the sake of others. So it would work as follows, that we engage in the first of the perfection, the perfection of generosity, and the second the perfection of ethics in order to mainly to about a cessation of our attachment. Then by the practice of tolerance we mainly bring about a cessation of our hatred.
Then through the practice of meditative concentration and wisdom we mainly bring about a cessation of delusion of ignorance. And then as a basis for achieving all of these, we practice the joyous effort. Generosity is miserliness, and miserliness attachment to an object such that we are not able to give it away. Therefore, the antidote to miserliness is the practice of generosity. And then Most of our negative actions, most of our physical and verbal negative actions are motivated out of attachment.
And the way that we can begin to inhibit and bring about a cessation to the negative actions of verbal and physical negative actions is through the restraints of ethics. So therefore, it is in this way that ethics and generosity of these practices act as an antidote to attachment. Generosity and ethics, can eliminate manifest attachment. We cannot eliminate from its roots, but simply the manifest level of attachment. And then as a means to overcome the affliction of anger.
Anger is the intention to harm another and the antidote to that is the practice of tolerance. We begin to see all the, we look at all the various faults of anger, how it hurt, it brings harm to another, how in itself we create a great deal of negative, it’s a very negative action and we destroy all our previous skillful actions that we create. And we go on in dependence upon tolerance to cultivate love which is the wish to bring others happiness and not to harm them. Simply through the practices of tolerance and love, we can only overcome the level of manifest anger and hatred. We cannot eliminate from its very root.
In order to eliminate all of the various afflictive emotions we must eliminate the delusion of ignorance from our mind. And in order to achieve this then we must make use of the method of meditative concentration and wisdom. Attachment and anger have as their basis the ignorance. Without removing ignorance then we cannot remove from their root attachment anger. So it’s necessary that we practice as a means to eliminate the ignorance which is the basis of all the afflictive emotions, meditative concentration and wisdom.
So it is by these means, by the means of these six perfections can bring about eliminate all the afflictive emotions within our mind through the development of these six perfections as a method within our own mind. Eliminating them, our mind becomes purified of the afflictive emotions. It becomes a very excellent and smooth, healthy mind. So the six perfections are taught as the means for the first, the elimination of the manifest level of the afflictive emotions within our mind, and then gradually through the strengthening of the perfections we are able to eliminate the afflictive emotions from the roots from our mind. And this is what is meant by a ripening process of our mind, one’s mind becomes ripened and one’s mind becomes liberated.
This is like this procedure ripening the mind. It’s like, you know, in order to ripen fruit quickly, sometimes we put the fruit in the sun, or some people even put it in hot water in order to quicken its ripening. And this is the same process we’re taking to make use of to ripen our mind. Then it becomes delicious once it’s ripe. If the fruit’s not ripe, then no matter how many how much we have, it’s it’s of no benefit.
So we’re going to we’ll stop there, but if you have some time, we’ll take time for questions. The therefore, it seems that maybe it’s difficult for the mind to manifest joy. So I it’s it’s puzzling. I’m just puzzling, joyful effort, joy.. Mhmm.
K. So one can one can, you know, that with respect to skillful actions, the Dharma in general, one can see that there is a thought that I should be doing this, I should be practicing this. And merely upon this level one perseveres and there’s no joy. There’s no happiness. One merely perseveres.
So it’s necessary in order to go beyond this level, in order to develop the actual joy to see the benefits and the excellent qualities which are derived from doing this. It’s only in cultivating the understanding of the great benefits and the excellent qualities which comes about from practicing that joy will arise in making the effort. And then this becomes joyous effort. Without cultivating the benefits and the qualities, simply thinking I should do this, and it is simply perseverance. But once we cultivate, reflect upon the excellent qualities and benefits to be derived, then there arises a joy in doing it, and then it becomes joyous effort.
So one has to cultivate, reflect upon the benefits and qualities of the practice in order to get the joy out of it. So it’s just like somebody’s in business. If they see, if they’re really mindful of the great profit that they’re going to get out transacting their business, then they’re going to engage in it with great enthusiasm, with a great liking. It’s not going to be easy it’s not going to be difficult for them at all. And this is because they see the great profit that they’re going to get out of their transaction, their dealings.
If they don’t see this, then it’s going to be drudgery. So this is quite similar. Okay. So, you know, if we’re going to go on to a park, maybe we’re going to a picnic, and we think and thinking about how wonderful the place is that we’re going to go to. No matter how difficult the road getting up there, we enjoy the walk, the trouble, difficulty of getting up there because thinking of what nice things are going to happen when we get there.