Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 46-minute teaching from 1985, Geshe Nawang Dhargyey guides practitioners through the essential foundation for compassion and enlightenment: developing equanimity toward all beings. He explains that equanimity removes the biased attachments and aversions that prevent bodhicitta from arising, and teaches two meditation methods for cultivating it. The main method involves visualizing a friend, enemy, and neutral person before you, examining why attachment, hatred, and indifference arise naturally in response, then using the fact of rebirth and past-life relations to logically undermine the bias—recognizing that all three have been your closest allies and fiercest opponents across countless lifetimes, making differential treatment irrational. Geshe Dhargyey then introduces the concept of all sentient beings as one’s mothers, explaining the continuity of consciousness, subtle and gross bodies and minds, and the five primary winds that sustain life. He emphasizes that equanimity and this understanding form the bedrock of Mahāyāna practice and world peace.
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File: 01 SF 1985 05 03.mp3
UUID: ba215d3a-9695-4707-b8b1-ec98fcd126b2
Teacher: Geshe Nawang Dhargyey
Collection: Advice from a Spiritual Friend (Geshe Nawang Dhargyey)
Date: 1985-05-03
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 46.1 minutes
Words: ~4,644
Just as it is said that a person who reflects even for a while, even for a moment, on the highest level of altruism that is sempa bodhicitta or altruistic mind of highest enlightenment. He will accumulate immense amount of merits, merits so immense that even Buddha’s omniscient mind will fail to calculate or measure the amount of merit such a person will have gathered or will have accumulated. Therefore, understanding of the significance of reflect reflecting on the highest level of the mind of enlightenment, we should make an attempt or we try our best in reflecting or meditating on that. The same thing has been said by great Nāgārjuna saying that one who wishes to work completely for self and others must attain or must develop the altruistic mind enlightenment and then develop the correct understanding of the reality of all phenomena unless one does want to achieve the state of enlightenment. Otherwise, if one is bent on achieving the state of highest enlightenment for the sake of all beings and to so that one can enjoy oneself and cause others to enjoy the eternal peace and happiness.
Such a person must make concerted effort in developing this altruistic mind of enlightenment. To go to the first floor, now we need either to go in a lift or, no. We have to climb the steps. And, like, after climbing the steps in order, then we we reach the first floor or the top floor. Similarly, in order to develop the highest form of altruism, we have to thoroughly train our minds in various thoughts that lead to generating that altruistic mind for enlightenment.
Two days back I was talking about the six types of suffering common to all beings and then there is another class of sufferings in which there are eight sufferings and these eight sufferings are common to all humans. Thus the importance of reflecting on suffering or contemplating sufferings is to make ourselves feel averse to the type of life that we live and to overcome the illusion that is something pleasant and everlasting. Thus, by contemplating sufferings, thus one will feel averse and a strong urge to live, to be free from these sufferings will develop. Thus, if one apply such a strong urge of freedom from suffering with regard to others, that will be the sense of great compassion. And only after one has developed sense of great compassion, one can hope to develop the highest level of altruistic thought that is the mind of enlightenment.
The altruistic mind of superior thoughts is developed on the sound foundation of thought of equanimity or the even mindedness or sense of equanimity. And it’s on the sense on the sound foundation of the sense of the thought through which one is able to treat all beings on the same level, on the same footing, and treat them equally kindly. And at present, we haven’t developed that foundation and that’s because our minds are so rough and so uneven because of attachment and attachment to one’s own side and to oneself, and hatred and feeling of distance with regards to others and, you know, and hostile people. So long as these two rough attitudes, rough thoughts are in our minds, so we won’t be able to lay the sound foundation of even mindedness. And without this even mindedness, then we wouldn’t able to able to develop other superior altruistic thoughts.
Today, I’m going to talk about how to meditate or how to develop that foundation, thought or consciousness of even mindedness. There are two methods as to how we can meditate on or how to two methods to develop even mindedness or equanimity. The first according to the first method, first you develop even mindedness by visualizing a neutral person before you and then after you have developed equanimity or even mindedness or equanimity with regard to that then we visualize that second person closest friend and then when you have been successful in developing equanimity with regard to the closest friend closest person then with regard to your bitterest enemy and that’s the first method and according to the second method, so if you visualize all the three persons, the neutral the neutral, friendly, and, you know, hostile persons before before you and look at them and then try to develop even mindedness. I will deal with the second method of visualizing or visualizing the presence of all the three types of persons before one and then trying to iron out different rough attitudes that we will develop looking at them or observing them and then consequently developing even mindedness or equanimity.
As a person who at the very side of whose very side arouses anger and repugnance in your mind, so visualize him first. Then next, you visualize a person to whom you are extremely attached to. So much so that whose separation separation from whom you cannot even bear for a time for the time it takes to drink a cup of tea. Third, you visualize a neutral person, one who hasn’t been so your enemy nor your friend in them in your life. So visualize three types of such persons before one.
It is said that while trying to visualize the presence of three different people before one, your bitterest enemy and so on and in our case most of the time, we do have people who we don’t like or we call them our enemies. But when it comes to looking for a bitter person who you like your enemy, then due to some obstruction, we tend to fail. We failed. We tend to fail to find such a person, and such a failure to pin point or to find such a person is said to be some kind of obstruction in the development of even mindedness or equanimity. After having visualized three people before one, now if one looks at them, naturally, such observance of three people or looking at them will produce three different feelings in one, and the feeling of attachment, feeling of hatred, and indifferent feeling will be developed or will be of course in one’s mind or will be produced in one’s mind.
The feeling of attachment is naturally developed with regards to or by looking at when you see your closest friend. And the feeling of hatred and distant feeling developed by looking at your bitter enemy and the different attitude or different feeling is developed when you look at the neutral persons. These reflections on these being a kind of meditation, then you have to be analytic and, you know, rational and now examine why you develop, you know, attachment, a feeling of extreme closeness with regard to your closest friend. You develop a feeling of of one develops extreme feeling of closeness with regard to, you know, one’s friend. It’s because it’s because of the he or she has spoken to you very kindly or has helped you in some ways or has given you some articles and these are the grounds why, you know, you tend to develop a strong attachment to him.
When strong attachment, overflowing attachment develops in your mind or in one’s mind while looking at one’s closest friend, then in order to overcome or in order to remove a strong attachment and clinging to that person or one’s friend, now you should bring back or you should recall the first of the six sufferings common to all beings in the world existence. The first suffering being suffering of lack of certainty, it’s in a lack of certainty of relationships in terms of enmity and friendship. Now who you call your friend and to whom you are so attached now? So there’s no guarantee. There’s no definite so for there’s no definite point that you will or he will be your friend, closest friend for all times to come.
And and he has been your closest friend for all no. For eternity because in the past, he’s he has been he he was your close your enemy, and as a bitter enemy, he has harmed you many times. Understanding how he had been your enemies many enemy many times in the past. And as enemy as your enemy, you know, how he harmed you in different ways, killing you, robbing you, and inflicting various pain and sufferings. And thus, if you can’t come to realize the unkind actions he had done to to you in the past, then such a reflection of unkind unkind actions, suffering inflicted on you by him will then offset the strong attachment you have now to him in the present life.
Second, when you look at your enemy, again, it’s quite natural that feeling of hatred, strong, intense hatred will arise in your mind. And, again, you have to examine why you are developing or why these feelings are cropping up in your mind. If you you know, when you examine these feelings are developing, you will come to understand or you will recall that the reason why ill feelings with regard to him are developing is because he sometime in the past harmed or caused suffering to one of your friends or suffer robbed you of your possession or stolen your possession or has abused you in the public or I spoke to you very unkindly, and these are some of the reasons or some petty reasons because of which you are angry towards him and ill feelings towards him are arising in your mind. Now understanding how it’s unreasonable and harmful to let ill feelings towards develop in your mind. And in order to overcome these ill feelings or bad feelings, again, the same understanding of the lack of certainty of relationships in terms of enmity and friendship, which is common, this suffering, lack of certainty of relationships among sentient beings must be recalled.
And now I want to think that it’s unreasonable on my part to let these ill feelings go towards him on this small, unpetty grounds. I should not do this because in the past my many past lives so he has or he had been my father and my mother and my closest friend many times and as these extremely closely related persons, he benefited me and helped me in many ways. He had been extremely kind to me in many ways as my father, as my mother, as my closest friend. And therefore, I should not let this I should not let the small I should not let the small harmful actions that he has done to me in this life let me forget the kindnesses that he had done to me in the past and thus reflecting more on the kindness and less on insignificant harmful actions he has done to one in the present life. So that’s how we try to offset or remove hatred for the enemy.
But and how it’s unreasonable to feel so excessively attached to him because he also was or had been my bitterest enemy in the past. And although now my enemy, although he has harmed me a little bit in this life and because of which I’m angry at him, but it is also unreasonable to be angry and to to have hatred for him because what because of extreme kind, immense kind actions he has done to me in the past. Thus, both the friend and enemy of this love had been friend and enemy in the past as well as friend and enemy in, you know, in the friend has been also friend and enemy in the enemy, and your enemy has been also for your enemy and friend. So both happen both, you know, friends and enemies. So this when both have been both things, friends and enemies friend and enemy, so is it now reasonable to have biased attitudes toward these two people?
In the same way, if there are two persons now, I’ll give an example how it’s a lot unreasonable. If last year a man gave you one thousand dollars and now has beaten you up in year, and now there’s another person who beat you up last year but gave you one thousand dollars this year. Now both the persons have done the same thing, have beaten you up as well as given you one thousand dollars So would it be logical and it reasonable to feel attached to one of them and have ill feelings towards other? Similarly, the friend has been friend has been kind and also unkind. The enemy has been unkind and has also been kind to one.
So both have been kind and unkind to one. Therefore, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t so much be swayed by attitudes towards them. It’s just that the reason why we cannot develop sense of equanimity towards them is because we aren’t able to think far into the future and aren’t able to look back into the past. And when you look at a neutral person, naturally the indifferent attitude, indifferent feelings are going to develop in in one’s mind. And, again, one must examine.
Has he been the neutral person for all times in the past? And will and now if you examine, then also come to understand that although he hasn’t harmed me or helped me in the present life, but he liked the other two. Had been my friend many times in the past. And as a friend, he had helped me. He helped me or he had helped me and to give kind assistance to me in the past.
And he also had been my enemy in the past many times. And as enemy, he was extremely cruel to me and sort of inflicted all possible bad things and suffering on me. That’s all the three persons before me. They are equal in that they have been equally my friend, equally my friends and enemies. Thus, it will be unreasonable on my part.
So when they have been equal from their part, so it will be unreasonable on my part now to have different attitudes going towards them. Thus, visualizing three such persons before one and first letting biased attitudes develop in one, also seeing the unreasonableness of such attitudes trying to iron out the differences or the bias, removing these different attitudes, attitudes. Thus, naturally, through one’s practice of meditation on this, one is bound to develop a sense of equanimity towards all the three persons. You have been successful in your attempts to develop even mindedness towards these three people, then you should try to develop the same even mindedness towards your neighbors. Able to treat all your neighbors equally kindly or treat them on the same footing or bring them on the same footing and to know any different attitudes going towards them, then you should try to develop the same even mindedness or equanimity towards all people in this city.
When you have been successful in incorporating all people of this city and to treat them kindly or equally. And then the same, you should try to enlarge or to increase the scope of that equanimity to be able to treat all Australians on the same footing. And then increase the capacity of these by incorporating people in neighboring countries like New Zealand, Singapore, Malaysia, and so on. And thus, as you are successful in generating or in developing this kind of equanimity towards all people in neighboring countries, then towards all people in the world, and then people all sending being to our space and how they have been equally our friends, equally our enemies, so no point, no reason why I should let different feelings going towards them develop in my mind. Thus, try to treat all sentient beings equally and that has to be equally kindly.
Suggested and recommended by the past experienced masters, Development of this attitude, equanimity, being the very foundation, the indispensable foundation for the development of superior Mahāyāna realizations or thoughts and worth spending any time it takes to develop this attitude if need be the entire lifetime. Thus, if only could develop or people in the world could develop sense of equanimity. Advantages are great not only speaking from the spiritual point of view but extremely advantageous and beneficial also speaking from the the point of peace, prevalence of peace in the world. And in that, with equanimity, so our actions of being kind and friendly to our friends and people related to to one, and unkind or cruel cruel to others would naturally subside. And when these wrong actions of inflicting suffering and cruelty on a group of people and kindness towards others come to an end, peace will be there in the world.
If all people in the world could develop this kind of equanimity, then no meetings are necessary to discuss the means to stop war as different conflicts and the war taking place in the world because people would have overcome attachment and hatred for one another. With these overcome, naturally there will be no wars and conflicts are absolutely unnecessary. When you have been able to develop this first attitude of equanimity, then the next thing we have to train ourselves in is in the development of an understanding how all sentient beings are our mothers. Now the second thing is to try to develop the understanding that all sentient beings are one’s mothers and that sentient beings are one’s mothers is decidedly declared, emphasized by the Buddha himself saying that I haven’t seen myself sentient beings are not my mothers and therefore he said all sentient beings are mothers of one. Thus, if we could come to appreciate this fact since and if you could develop spontaneous feelings that sentient beings are one’s mothers.
So whenever one sees any person, any being, only affection would develop in one’s mind and no ill feelings or biased attitudes. How do we know that sentient beings have been our mothers or our mothers? We deduce the fact through logical reasoning of establishing that there is no beginning to our consciousness. There’s no beginning to the continuum of our consciousness. And because there’s no beginning to our consciousness, speaking from the past point of view, it means that throughout beginningless time our consciousness has been taking countless rebirths and at each rebirth a mother was required to take a rebirth and therefore because our rebirths have been countless and therefore sentient beings must be our mothers, must have been our mothers during these uncountable rebirths.
And now there are different are reasons and logics explained in the treatises of Buddhist logic and we don’t have time here. In the future, if you meet qualified master then it will be nice indeed to study such a kind of logical reason which proves this fact. For, you know, development of conviction, understanding and then conviction in the existence of former life and understanding and conviction in the existence of a future life is not only important from the point of establishing this fact that there’s no beginning to our consciousness and at each rebirth we needed a sentient being to be our mother and then how that’s how sentient beings are our mothers. Also a certain understanding, such a conviction in the existence of former and future lives is important to be able to appreciate practice of law of cause and effect. It’s because of the existence of future lives and in future we want to be happy and to be happier and happiness comes only to a cause and that cause has to be the practice of virtues, wholesome actions.
Therefore, there arises the need of practicing virtues which comes by way of observing the law of cause and effect. Now, let me tell you that of two things we have got at present, the body and mind. And now with regard to our bodies, our bodies are of two types, gross bodies and subtle bodies, or let’s say in the singular number. Now gross body and subtle body. There are two types of mind, gross mind and subtle mind.
Now our gross body is not going to go to the next life and it’s going to be left behind in the world. Examples of gross minds are sensory consciousnesses. These are said to be minds. These examples of gross minds. And the gross minds will cease with the cessation of this gross body.
Although our gross body and mind have not come from the past because these are adventitiously accomplished with birth and the personal life, and therefore will not go to the next life. But we have a subtle mind and a subtle body which has reference to subtle energy or wind. These are inseparable from each other. So it is these two which have come from the beginning of time and which will go eternity in the future and because the journey of these two has been throughout the beginning of time to eternity or to infinity in the future. So this proves the existence of former lives and the existence of future lives.
What’s happening today is that the gross mind and the gross body are not in the manifest form, so they are sort of in the dormant form. What manifests is the subtle body and the subtle mind. And now, when we die, at death, the dissolution of various elements, the four elements, which compose our bodies will take place. The earth element into water element will dissolve. The dissolution of earth into water, water into fire into wind, and wind into consciousness will take place at death.
And the consciousness the conscious wind in consciousness and the consciousness and the gross consciousness and the final consciousness until all the gross forms of consciousness have dissolved into the most subtle consciousness of the clear light of death. When the clear light of death comes to manifest form, then it means that the clear light of our mind, which has been in dormant form when we are alive, has come into manifest form, when this becomes manifest, at the point when this becomes manifest, all the gross consciousnesses have come to an end. Then during the time of clear light of death, there is the clear light mind of death and its ever accompanying energy, the subtle wind. And the moment these leave one’s body, then they would be in the intermediate state. That’s how they do not become non existent but continue to exist in the next life.
And then that clear light of clear light mind of death and its accompanying subtle energy leaves this body, and it enters the world of intermediate existence and looking for a next rebirth in the world of intermediate existence, a spouse is to be reborn as human again, then such a mind will be conceived again in the womb again in the womb of a human mother, and then after it has been in the womb of a human mother, in the womb of a human mother for a month, then it’s from that subtle consciousness and wind. So for gross consciousness and the gross energy will sprout off and will develop. And it is this gross energy, gross wind, which which stems from the gross, subtle energy, and then which holds. It’s this gross energy which holds together our present body and mind. Thus, at present, what holds together our body and our mind is gross energy.
And what is the point of actual death? The point of actual death is separation of mind from body. And when will that separation occur? That separation will occur when the gross energy which holds together mind body dissolves into the subtle energy. That’s the point of actual death.
We have, at present, five kinds of primary winds and secondary winds. And the first wind, the first primary wind is called life sustaining wind. And the life sustaining wind is its location is at heart. And the second primary wind is called ascending wind. And ascending, the function its location is at the throat, and its function is control of speech and in a swallowing of food and drink.
The third wind is called evenly abide even ab evenly abiding wind, and its location is at navel. Evenly abiding or even abiding. Let’s say, simplicity, it’s like even wind at a navel, its function is separation of gross food from the pure energy of food, and the gross is thrown away as a waste, human waste. The nutrition of food is then sent to the body as energy. The descending wind, the fourth is called the descending wind.
Its location is at the sacred organ of men and women. Is, you know, excretion, to regulate excretion and blood, etcetera. And regulation of excretion of the feces and urine and then also controlling balance of blood. And then the fifth one is called the pervading wind, and it’s called pervasive wind or the pervading wind. It pervades the entire body.
And location is the entire body and the function of the pervading wind is to cause various movements of parts of our bodies like stretching and bending, etc. When the power of wind comes to an end, a dying person cannot move the parts of his body. Next, I am going to talk about the secondary winds next time. And now it’s important to know these types of important winds that flow in our body that are in our bodies. And now when we say attainment of enlightenment, the attainment of enlightenment doesn’t mean transformation of this body and the present gross consciousness or gross minds into the enlightened consciousness.
It in fact refers to transformation of the subtle consciousness into the omniscient mind and subtle wind into kaya or the glorious body of the Buddha. So that is the real these are the two which have come from the beginningless time and which are in the state of contamination caused by delusions and it is these two when they are totally purified of various contamination then these will go to the state of enlightenment. One, the mind, subtle consciousness or subtle mind becomes the omniscient mind of the Buddha and the wind becomes the glorious kaya or the body of the Buddha. Learning of the presence or understanding how we have, you know, these two subtle mind and subtle wind also will help one to understand because of the everlasting continuity, this will also help us understand of the existence of former lives and the existence of future lives and those who say that there aren’t former lives and future lives are some of the non-Buddhist schools, and that’s called the Cārvākas. And because hedonists, to judge whether something exists or not, to them such a thing must be seen only by direct valid cognizer or power of cognitive power and can never posit the existence of some some obscure thing which is obscure to the direct valid cognition but can be understood through inference because they do not believe in the power of inferential and inferentially valid understanding and because the existence of former and future lives are obscure to sensory direct or valid cognitions because their sensory direct or valid cognitions cannot perceive them and their thought went to the point of asserting that former lives do not exist and because they cannot be seen by direct valid cognition or cognizer like the sensory consciousness.
There have been many people who were able to remember and understand their former lives. Even today, are some who understand or remember their past lives. Only a few, I think, three years back, there was a small girl who could remember her last life very vividly.