Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 45-minute talk, Geshe Dhawa Gyaltsen establishes why sentient beings matter more than wish-fulfilling gems: they are essential for liberation and generating bodhicitta. He then teaches the foundational mind-training practice of replacing self-cherishing with cherishing others. Specifically, view yourself as the lowest of all—regardless of caste, intelligence, beauty, or spiritual accomplishment—and admire others’ good qualities without jealousy. He offers a practical daily exercise: before sleep, examine why you love one person and hate another, using this to train equanimity. He addresses meditation posture and clarifies how mind training actually works. Throughout, he grounds the teaching in logical reasoning, showing how past masters achieved enlightenment through cherishing others, and admits his own ongoing struggle with self-cherishing despite teaching it.
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File: 02 ToM.mp3
UUID: 0fd04f38-10ee-4a62-8322-01eeab090649
Teacher: Geshe Dhawa Gyaltsen
Collection: Training of the Mind (Geshe Dhawa Gyaltsen)
Date: 1996 (exact day not recorded)
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 44.7 minutes
Words: ~2,138
So on the basis of this mind that is bodhicitta, if one works for the benefit of others, then as a result one gains, one receives, all the temporal happiness. And not only that — the liberation far better than that of the lesser liberation. So that is what we can achieve in dependence upon sentient beings. So sentient beings are much far better than the wish-fulfilling gems. So just to achieve liberation, one has to depend upon sentient beings.
Without depending upon sentient beings, there’s no way one can achieve liberation. So if you talk of going to the mind training teachings, then for that, sentient beings are very important. And just to generate bodhicitta, you need to do it in dependence upon sentient beings — and likewise to generate compassion, to generate love, and to recognise sentient beings as one’s mother. All these one needs to depend upon sentient beings. In dependence upon sentient beings, we generate this mind.
And not only that, but the rest — like to train oneself in the perfections and the five sciences. All these too, we do in dependence upon sentient beings. Oh, yeah. So then the next two lines, which is the highest welfare of all sentient beings — which is not only thinking of working for sentient beings in a limited sense, that is to bring happiness just for this very life or to bring them to a higher rebirth — that is, humans and gods — but thinking the highest, which is the fully enlightened state.
[unclear — possible verse reference or Tibetan phrase] So to the highest welfare of all sentient beings, what do I say? I hold them dearly and train. So which is — in this line, the meaning is that giving up the self-cherishing mind and instead of that, training this mind which is cherishing others.
So we should make ourselves know how to train the mind. So once you know how to train — once like this you know how to train — one shouldn’t go too far, which is saying that for the sake of others, doing things like causing harm even to one’s physical body. So because in order to work for other sentient beings or in order to benefit other sentient beings, oneself first has to be mentally and physically healthy. And one also needs a long life to benefit other sentient beings. So because of that reason, one shouldn’t be careless in the sense that just because one is working for other sentient beings, one is bringing harm to oneself.
So now, going to the next four lines, which is: when accompanying anyone, I shall view myself as the lowest of all. So which is — when accompanying anyone, wherever you are living, whatever kind of company or friends you have — whoever you accompany, in that place you view yourself as the lowest one. So you view yourself as the lowest of all and train in respecting others. So when we say friends, the friends who are higher than one — that is, one’s Lama.
And those friends who are equal to one — that is, those Dharma friends around one who are seeking liberation. And then those friends who are lower than one — such as the beggars and so on. So which includes everyone — the partners of this life, the friends, the relatives, everyone. So once being the lowest of all — which is if you look at in the caste system, one being oneself at the lowest — the level of one’s different levels of mind — being oneself the lowest, the very lowest.
Yeah. And in different qualities, regarding oneself as the lowest. Whether among those with many qualities or the many faults that one has, one regards oneself as the lowest of all. So there are different castes — where even if one is of the highest caste, like the royal caste or king’s caste, one shouldn’t feel proud of that.
So even if one is born in a royal caste, one should see oneself — one should view oneself as the lowest, even lower than the, what is it, the butcher’s caste. And the same thing physically — one shouldn’t be proud of having a beautiful body or a strong body. Shouldn’t be proud of having a strong body. So physically, how one should view — how one should view is that one should view oneself as being very, very ugly, which nobody wants to see.
So then with the level of intelligence — even if one is very high, very intelligent — one shouldn’t be proud of that. So one is advised not to be proud and not to have pride. And that is because if one has pride, one won’t be able to successfully train oneself in the five different knowledges or five different sciences. So then through one’s behaviour, though one is doing a minor practice — like doing a pure Mahāyāna practice — one shouldn’t again feel proud or have this pride of being a Mahāyānist.
So one doing a pure practice might think or have this thought in one’s mind saying one is a religious person or a pure practitioner. But thinking at that stage — even when one is doing pure practice — one should think that one is engaging in, as it were, negative or mistaken actions. Yes, even when performing pure practice, one should think that there is no time when one is not committing mistaken and impure things. Like, only physically but even mentally, one is always having negative thoughts. So one is having negative thoughts.
That’s how one should think. So because of that, one is always committing these non-virtuous actions — one should think that it will be very hard to even achieve a good rebirth in one’s future life, because one is always engaging in negative actions. So thinking or training one’s mind in this way and being oneself the lowest of all — which is imagining that underneath one there is only the water. Thinking in that way.
So lower than oneself is only the waters — thinking in that way, training one’s mind in that way. And then when you see others, thinking that others are very advanced, or that they are training in bodhicitta and practising the six perfections and doing these different practices — thinking of these different qualities and train your mind. So when one sees qualities in others, one shouldn’t feel jealous of those qualities, but rather one should admire them and feel how marvellous they are. And in that way we should train our mind. So in short, what it is explaining here is that one shouldn’t cherish oneself — instead, one should cherish others. So whatever one has — whether one is of high caste or very intelligent or royalty or advanced or well qualified — in all these qualities, one shouldn’t have pride or arrogance.
And not to be jealous towards others’ good qualities. So in short, even if one is from a high caste and one is well qualified and wealthier than the others, one should still train one’s mind seeing oneself as the lowest of all. So like — if there is water running from the top of a mountain, then all the water will gather where there is a valley, a hollow at the bottom of the hill, a place that could hold water — like a valley or a dam at the bottom of the hill. So Geshe-la said we’ll stop here for tonight. And because if you go too long, then maybe you won’t show up next time. So we’ll stop here for tonight, and next teaching we’ll follow up on this. And said he will explain in the most easy way.
Oh, yeah. And anyone who would like to ask — so all the different sciences? Like a craft. Craft.
Yeah. And the study of medicine. Study of grammar. And logic. Like philosophy.
And then like the inner science. Oh, very good. These are the five. Five, yeah, five sciences.
So in order to achieve Buddhahood, we need to learn all this. All this we need to be qualified in — all these five sciences. Yeah. Kunsang? Yep.
So any questions you’d like to ask? Yeah. Sorry. I didn’t get your question. Mind training. Mhmm.
A way of testing. Mhmm. So we can. Like yeah. What mind training means is that if one has a negative mind — if one’s mind is under the influence of negative thoughts — then to remove that thought and bring a positive mind, that is what mind training is. So this self-cherishing or self-centred mind — which is I want to say my wife has a problem, my parents have a problem, my country has a problem — and this self-grasping, that is the mind that needs to be trained. So we have this mind that to some person we feel close to and we like them, and to some we don’t like. And to some when we see them suffering, we don’t care. So we have this type of mind.
And this is the mind which needs to be trained. So we have that type of mind which holds things in that way. And now we train that mind to see everyone equally — that they have all given the same kindness to one. So we train our mind in that part.
So training our mind in this way — I mean, it’s not easy. But if one trains oneself more and more continuously, then sometimes one can calm one’s mind and be able to see things in a different way, or train and follow in a different way. So for example, tonight before one goes to bed, just place your hand somewhere on your chest and then just think of two persons — one whom you hate and one whom you love, whether your parents or whoever. And then think: what are the reasons that you love one and what are the reasons that you hate one? And in that way, training your mind — and that’s a short explanation.
Yeah. Pardon me. Okay. So they’re both the same. Like, in meditation you see it — there are different ways of seeing it.
But the way of training your mind is the same. The process is the same. So with meditations also, there are different types of meditation we can meditate on. We can meditate on attachment, meditate on hatred, meditate on renunciation, meditate on bodhicitta, and so many things that we can meditate on. So just if you want to meditate on attachment, just think about attachment — then it’s much easier and your meditation would last longer.
And if you meditate on that, it won’t make you fall asleep. So with bodhicitta and renunciation — if you have a more clear and proper visualisation, then it’s okay, you can stay long, you can also have long meditations. But if you don’t have a clear or proper visualisation, then it might make you fall asleep.
So all this meditation practice — one can do meditations sitting properly and one can also do meditations in different positions. The reason for keeping all the meditation postures and doing them properly — again, there are reasons: if you sit properly then you purify negativities that you accumulate in relation to your body, your physical body. I do feel good. Any — sorry.
Benefiting others. Okay. Alright. Okay. Mhmm.
Mhmm. So one thing is that by cherishing others, that brings fulfilment of our ultimate wishes — to perceive and understand that. You can only do so through different logical reasoning to know that. So the logical explanation is that those past masters achieved the fully enlightened state because of cherishing others. And that is the one logical reasoning that is given to prove that.
Because we cherish ourselves, we still suffer — temporarily. For example, among a couple or among friends, if one cherishes others more than oneself, then as a result, that person will have a prosperous life. And one thing — that more people in one’s surroundings will like that person. And that is what the temporal benefit is that we could say.
So if you do see the person who from the depth of their heart cherishes others, then just meeting that type of person, you feel a joy in your mind. So for example, myself — when I speak many things, I can talk a lot here about how you should cherish others. But if I examine myself, then I fall into the other category which is cherishing myself. So what do I say? I complain a lot — saying that my monastery needs help. My monastery needs…