Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 45-minute talk from 1985, Geshe Nawang Dhargyey explains why thought-transformation teachings are intellectually simple but practically difficult, then systematically builds the case for abandoning self-cherishing as the root obstacle to liberation. Using Śāntideva’s reasoning, he contrasts the futility of pursuing self-interest throughout countless lifetimes with the achievement of Buddhas who work for others. He walks through specific advantages of cherishing others: proper human rebirth comes from past moral restraint; material sufficiency from generosity; physical health from patience; and genuine spiritual progress from altruistic intention. He then introduces the core practice—exchanging self for others through attitude rather than physical exchange—and details the meditation on giving and taking: visualising the black lump of self-cherishing at the heart; drawing in the sufferings of beings in all six realms as black rays of light; dissolving those sufferings into self-cherishing to destroy it; then sending forth one’s body, possessions, and virtues to free all beings. Directed at practitioners ready to engage seriously with mind-training methods.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 05 SF 1985 05 04.mp3
UUID: 5a2e851c-c4f0-43c7-846a-007e0450519e
Teacher: Geshe Nawang Dhargyey
Collection: Advice from a Spiritual Friend (Geshe Nawang Dhargyey)
Date: 1985-05-04
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 45.0 minutes
Words: ~4,853
For the thought transformation teachings is that they are not difficult to understand but the difficulty lies in their practice. And also it’s easy to understand the faults of self-cherishing thought and how self-cherishing thought is the real enemy that is lying within us and how throughout the beginning of this time due to selfish concern or self-cherishing thought, we have only worked for ourselves and yet accomplished nothing for ourselves. I’m not even guaranteed that we will not fall into the two lower realms in the next life. That is all due to self-cherishing thought and we do understand that it’s just so. If in the place of cherishing ourselves throughout the beginning of this time, we had cherished others, then by now I’m quite sure we would be we won’t be here in this worldly existence.
Would be completely enlightened Buddhas. The business of self-cherishing thought has again been stressed about the master I quoted this morning, Śāntideva, saying that although countless Buddhas have manifested in the world, yet nowhere remain untamed and unsubdued through their teachings because of our own selfish concern or our selfish self-cherishing thought. And if we repeat the same thing, and if we repeat, or if we allow the self-cherishing thought to repeat itself, then it is as though there would be no end to our worldly existence. When Buddha manifested when Buddha Śākyamūni manifested in the world, during his entire lifetime, every day through teaching, he helped a hundred thousands of beings or sentient beings attain the definite path to liberation or enlightenment and many of them even attained great high goals. And in our case, we do our own selfish concern, so we were so unfortunate not to have been born that time.
Because in the future when the average life span of humans will be eighty thousand years, the fifth Buddha, Maitreya, is going to manifest in the world and he will then perform the deed of attaining the self enlightenment and then after that he will give teachings and show spiritual paths to many. And now we should see that although we have failed so far, but we will never fail again in the future. We should see that we are able to find a place or room for ourselves at that time that Buddha will work immensely for the welfare of sentient beings. Maitreya Buddha will be born in a place called Ketumati in India. He will be born during the time of a king, one of those kings called universal monarch called Sankha, and he will have a very large empire.
He will be that Buddha will be born during the time of this particular king called universal monarch. And then he will take birth in a Brahmin family. And thus, after taking performing the deed of attaining enlightenment, he will work immensely for the spiritual welfare for countless fortunate beings. The world at that time will be a completely different world, as you can well understand, because the average lifespan is eighty thousand years. People are so mellow, so subdued, so religious minded, and so peaceful.
And at that time, then we wouldn’t have to climb up and down the steep slopes or hills. The entire world would be completely sort of flat and like yes. Even as the even like one’s own palm. human lifespan from average lifespan of hundred years to the time of the enlightened being. Now it has reduced I think to the average lifespan of sixty and it really keep on decreasing as the scripture say down to ten years and as the average lifespan of humans will keep on decreasing, they will be more unevenness in human environment, meaning that there will be mountains will grow higher and there will be more valleys to climb down and go up and down.
So that in fact is reflective or reflects the decreasing lifespan and the degeneration that takes place in human mind. These things in a way speak for and reflect the working of human mind and how human mind or humans have become so corrupt and degenerated. And natural calamities like earthquake, cyclones, and bushfire, and then also heavy rainfall and so on, which take a heavy toll of human lives. So these are in fact results of collective negative actions performed by humans coming back on them. Expect more and better because what we think, what humans think of, they always think of deluded thoughts and they always have deluded thoughts in their mind and all that they do is sinful actions.
So what more can than we expect or humans expect out of their negative actions? That’s the plot of humans at large. And now among such humans and those who really think of practice of teachings or spiritual teachings then must be extraordinary humans, extremely fortunate ones. Thus, it would be nice indeed if we could give more thoughts to disadvantages and to the crippling faults of self-cherishing thought. I explained to you this morning.
Although we have been working throughout the beginning of this time for our own interests, yet we haven’t achieved anything through selfish interests and by being selfish. Therefore, it’s time that we change the state of mind and now we come to abandon selfishness and come to hold others dear and cherish others. And those who, as I told you this morning, national leaders who really work for the welfare of their fellow beings extremely sincerely. They are remembered for a long time. Take the example of Mahatma Mahatma Gandhi of India.
He abandoned his own interests, his own comforts of life, and his own self position in society. He worked selflessly for the Indian masses and even went to prison many times, was thrown into prison by the British Raj for quite a few times and had to undergo great difficulties. And even after gaining independence, he didn’t want any political post or status. He mixed with the downtrodden and fought for their cause, the untouchable ones. It’s for this reason of challenging others more than oneself that he is remembered very much by Indian masses.
Otherwise, if you look at him, he is a bony, skinny old man, clad in a white strip of cotton cloth. And if you were to go by looks, he is not at all something who would arouse such a veneration in him and respect. It’s just because he worked so selflessly for Indian masses, completely forgetting himself, his own interests and interests of his family, that he is held in high esteem by all Indians. Maybe exceptions are there. And the same thing with regard to other leaders who have worked or who are working for the common good.
They are always liked and respected. And now that we have understood that we have achieved nothing, literally nothing, by working so selfishly throughout beginningless time for our own good yet achieve nothing. And now it means that there’s something wrong with our technique. Therefore we should know something’s wrong with our means or our technique. Therefore is a time that we change that and we now come to cherish.
We should try to see that we cherish employ the means of the technique of cherishing others and see how it works. Now I will now deal with the second or the third section of the first section. I will deal with the third section of reflecting from various angles on the advantage of cherishing others. Take, for example, a man in a certain neighborhood who really forgets the interests of his own family but is all the time working for the interest and the welfare of that community. And how do people respond to him and react to him, that itself is clear enough to make us realize the importance of of cherishing others.
Here again the same master Śāntideva said, in short, all that there are all form of goodness that they are in the world have stemmed from the thought of cherishing others and thought of wishing happiness to others. That we have obtained human life or that we are human. humans is also because of being humans has directly come from the thought of cherishing others. Because in the past, caring for others’ lives and respecting others’ lives out of concern for them, we abstain from killing others and observe various morality. And as a result of abstaining from inflicting suffering in the form of killing others and observing various morality morality being the indispensable cause to be humans and to cause in the future life, so we are humans.
And it’s because of our concern that we develop for others welfare and that we developed for others. And that we do not live from hand to mouth at present and we are not in the tooth of poverty is because we practice generosity. We practice generosity in the past out of concern for others’ need and of concern for removing others’ poverty and suffering, we give things as far as we could in the past as a result of which, although I’m not that pretty well off, still we do have the basic necessities of life. And that we don’t suffer from physical deformities like lack of various defects in one’s senses or that we are not repulsive or ugly. It’s also due to our practice of patience and when out of patience we do not retaliate others suffering harmful actions done to us by others in the past and respecting their peace of mind we are patient with their harmful actions and out of that patience or tolerance, we today do not suffer from various physical deformities or ugly looks.
As humans, when we enjoy a healthy long life, that can be directly attributed to our actions of not killing others and saving others’ lives out of respect for their lives. So again the reason why we are able to enjoy healthy long life could be or is the advantage that we are enjoying out of cherishing others. In short, all goodness from worldly to transmundane existence stems necessarily from the thought of cherishing others. So all physical and mental well-being that enjoy while we are in the world existence. And along the path when we are successful in the practice of various spiritual paths, that success again must be attributed to the thought of cherishing others and then the state of everlasting bliss and happiness of enlightenment is also necessarily attained by cherishing others.
Thus all forms of goodness in both mundane and supermundane existence must come from the thought of cherishing others. Then here the master Śāntideva says, didn’t talk much about the difference between the thought of selfish concern and cherishing others. Just look at the difference between the actions of two. Ordinary people who work for themselves throughout beginningless time and what have they got out of that. And then look at selfless deeds and actions of the Buddhas and what have they achieved out of that.
If you understand the difference between the two, then you’ll understand understand the advantages and disadvantages of cherishing others and cherishing ourselves. Observe the difference of the two attitudes and then you’ll know benefits and the demerits or disadvantages of the two. In fact, in order to train ourselves in the deeds of the bodhisattvas and in the practices of bodhisattvas, because these practices are so exhaustively dealt with in the Avatamsaka Sūtra and other sutras. So we cannot study these because that’s too vast for us. Therefore it would be nice indeed if you make it a point.
I also have the program of studying the Bodhicharyavatara or the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life which condenses the entire meaning of those sūtra and explains the deeds of bodhisattvas very briefly yet very lucidly in that text. For text in terms of a text which will really bring about certain types of emotion in us. And by studying this text, if a person remains unsubdued or if he remains incorrigible, then he be incorrigible forever. Very touching and extremely beautiful work. And it’s a very it’s a famous text among the Indian pandits, and they and they loved studying and going through it.
And and it said that there are about ten Indian pundits commentary on this work. Its popularity also can be understood from the number of commentaries written by the Tibetan masters, and we can then understand that it was or it is a very popular text. And it is also now translated into English as you know and it will be nice if you can study this. I taught this text quite a few times at the Tibetan Library and many students have notes and will be nice if you can get hold of such a very good note. It’s only when we study things and understand things ourselves, our conviction benefits and the validity of teachings get enhanced.
The fourth one is is actual thought of exchanging self for others. Now, on the fourth section is actual thought of exchanging self for others, which means this exchange doesn’t have physical exchange and mental exchange. It doesn’t mean that we should exchange exchange our bodies or our minds for these are impossible to take place. So here exchange means we have to exchange the selfish concern, the thought of cherishing self for the thought of cherishing others. And we have to change these two types of attitudes.
And the change of these two attitudes is called actual thought of cherishing self for others. What we have to change is or exchange is up to now, throughout beginningless time, we have always held ourselves quite dear and cherished ourselves very much. And now and as a result of which, we have been very indifferent and we have ignored indifferent to others and ignored them and ignored their happiness and their welfare. Now we have to exchange selfish selfishness and that selfish concern for for an attitude which cherishes or mind which cherishes others and a mind which holds others very dear to it. If you could make or let sudden feeling develop, a desire or exchange for others develop in you even for a while, this will collect immense merits and will clear our immense obscurations and sinful actions.
The fourth section was actual of self for others, actual thought of exchanging self for others. So it means, you know, exchanging of attitudes rather than changing of minds and changing of physical bodies. In order to develop or to push our morale in being able to do this, it would be nice sometimes to go through the Jātaka tales which narrate the stories of Buddha’s past life when he performs selfless sacrifice for the sake of many and for the sake of suffering beings. And it would be nice to go through these Jātaka tales in order to draw inspiration and boost up our morale. Bodhisattvas, because they have gained perfection in their training, in their thought, training teachings, they now can give away parts of their body and make great sacrifices and yet remain unperturbed.
Suppose someone were to cut off Bodhisattva’s flesh piece by piece, Bodhisattva, instead of getting angry at such a person, out of profound compassion for him, would remain extremely unperturbed and let him do as the person according to his wish. In our case, it is difficult to train ourselves like the bodhisattvas. Therefore, what we must do is we must train our thoughts to be able to do so in the future. At present, not only can we not do it, we are also forbidden from literally giving away parts of our body and making those glorious sacrifices because we are ordinary practitioners. As ordinary practitioners these things are forbidden but they are asked to attain their minds so that when the mind is totally trained, then they will attain a position or stage when they will literally make selfless sacrifices without any suffering.
And through concentrating our minds in disadvantages of self-cherishing thought and the advantages of cherishing others and thus exchanging literally exchanging self for others, changing the attitude, then we will have developed the strength to literally engage in those actions, especially when our sense of compassion is so intense and at the same time when we develop the wisdom which directly understands emptiness of inherent existence, which is the underlying reality of all phenomena, then we would have become ārya bodhisattvas. And when we become ārya bodhisattvas, we will have no trouble whatsoever in giving away all that we possess, even our body, parts of our body. And we can be able to give these as easily as we can give some common things at the present stage like giving a few coins to the needy and so on. Back to the fifth section. The fifth section is how to practice giving and taking in dependence on the previous four sections.
And now the fifth practice is giving and taking. Although as the wording says giving and taking, but in reality we begin with a start off by taking others’ suffering on one. And in taking others’ suffering, in the group of others, we include all sentient beings of the six realms of existence. And the six realms of existence are the realm of hell, the hell realm, the hungry ghost realm, the animal realm, the human realm, the realm of demi gods and gods. So when we have to start our practice of giving and taking, when we begin it by taking, we take on ourselves by removing suffering of all beings of the six realms of existence.
We have trained our thoughts in the previous four sections and then when our thoughts, our minds are so powerful and have grown very strong, then we have to begin the practice of taking and giving. And now in order to take on oneself or on ourselves others suffering, first we have to generate a very intense compassion as much as one can generate. In other words, we have to recall the strongest sense of our compassion and compassion for other miserable suffering beings and then not able to stand their suffering, then we take it out on ourselves and free others of their sufferings. Now, we have to begin to take other suffering. First we begin with taking the suffering of intense heat of hot hell beings.
And before we do this, we must first visualize the self-cherishing thought in the form of a black lump at our heart. Then as we take on ourselves and extract the suffering of intense heat of hot hell beings, so they come in the form of a black rays of light. The suffering of intense heat of hot hell beings are absorbed in the form of a black light rays flood and this black light rays flood must not be kept on one’s other side but must be absorbed in one at heart. And then, you know, and then the hot sufferings, intense heat suffering of the hot hell beings are absorbed by one and it dissolves into this black lump of self-cherishing thought. Suffering of intense heat of hot held beings dissolve into that black lump of self-cherishing thought.
self-cherishing thought, please visualize, is bombarded by that and is destroyed. And then we begin next, we take the suffering of intense cold hell beings. Then visualize the same thing happening. And next we take suffering of extreme hunger and thirst of pretas or hungry ghosts. Next we take the suffering of extreme stupidity, suffering of devouring each other, suffering of being domesticated of animals.
So these sufferings are, in previous case, absorbed in one in the form of a black rays of light, and then black rays of light dissolve into the black lump of self-cherishing thought, and then the lump is bombarded and selfish concern is imagined that this has destroyed or or freed one of selfish concern. That’s how we train our minds in the destruction or in the elimination of selfish concern. Next, one takes on one’s suffering of constant conflict and war that demigods have to fight with or against gods. Then suffering of gods in the form of gods suffering of not having certainty about how long they will live in in the beautiful god realm and that they will then fall into miserable lower realms of existence. And their mental or psychological suffering is absorbed by one and then it dissolve into the black lump of selfish concern at heart.
And then we take on or one takes on oneself or absorb the suffering of fellow humans. And like one undergoing eight types of suffering. The first suffering, I didn’t teach you the eight types of suffering. Now I will count them here. The first suffering is the suffering of birth.
The second human suffering is suffering of aging, suffering of various sicknesses, and suffering of death, and suffering of not finding the desired object. And that’s what afflicts everyone today in the world. And suffering of separation from the beloved and dear ones, like from from one’s parents, from one’s love partner, from one’s beloved ones and from one’s teacher and so on. So much against their will humans have in many circumstances have to be separated from them. And the next human suffering is suffering with undesirable things.
Suffering undesirable things like sicknesses, problems in the court, and litigation and financial problems. And then the last human suffering is the suffering of carrying the load of the five contaminated aggregates, which is the root, which is the source from which all other types of sufferings stem from. So these are eight sufferings from birth to carrying the load of the contaminated aggregates, the source of all suffering. So these sufferings are common to all human beings. Except that human life is conducive to practice.
Otherwise, it’s not something that is wished for because it’s full of suffering. So it’s full of suffering and yet human life is extremely powerful, extremely conducive to practices, and especially in terms of generating the altruistic aspiration to highest enlightenment. It is said that that is best developed by humans or on the physical basis of human life. Especially by especially someone by practicing, especially a being by practicing the highest yoga tantra achieves the state of highest enlightenment in one lifetime. That being, that person must be a human a certain continent whose body is made of five elements and who was born from human womb.
The junior tutor to His Holiness the Dalai Lama called Kyabje Trijang Rinpoche, he said that human life is so powerful and so useful that even bodhisattvas in the Sukhāvati Pure Land, the blissful Pure Land of Lord Amitābha, they are constantly praying that may they be reborn as human in the southern continent, a human who is born from womb and whose body is made up of five elements whereas in our case we pray that may we be reborn in the Sukhāvati pure land. From this we would know that we waste this human life without engaging in certain practices and if we spend just for fulfilling the worldly ends, then it indeed is a great loss. If we waste this life, which if we make a proper use of, can help us achieve the state of high enlightenment in one lifetime. If we use it only for worldly purposes or cause, think nothing would be more unfortunate than that. After we have removed or taken upon ourselves the suffering sentient beings of the six realms of existence.
Then we can also include the trainees of the lesser vehicles, the arhats of the lesser vehicles, bodhisattvas up to the tenth stage. Although the arhats of the lesser vehicles and bodhisattvas don’t have literal sufferings as sentient beings have, yet they suffer from various faults, various shortcomings, shortcomings. So we take on ourselves those shortcomings, although we are inferior to them. But it’s like developing the courage and turning the mind, being able to do that if that arises, if such situation arises. Therefore, we take upon ourselves the shortcomings of arhats of the lesser vehicle.
Their obstructions to omniscience is still with them and the bodhisattvas also have, some have obstructions to omniscience, others have obstructions to liberation, others have obstructions to highest omniscience. So we take upon those obstructions to omniscience and to liberation which are their shortcomings, although they don’t have suffering. And we ourselves, we imagine that we free them of their shortcomings. And what we exclude, people we exclude, or beings who we exclude with regard to removing their suffering shortcomings is the Buddha and the spiritual master. Except these two, we can always take something from sentient beings and highly evolved practitioners.
When you have done the visualization of extracting others’ suffering or removing others’ suffering from them. And at the end of each removal of suffering of various groups of sentient beings and various evolved beings generate a strong, joyous feeling for being able to do so. Then the next stage of this practice is to send. Now that we have freed sentient beings from their suffering and highly evolved beings from their shortcomings of obstructions to, omniscience and liberation, then we next send forth our goodness towards them. Can send forth three things that we possess.
We can send forth and give them our material possessions, our bodies, and our roots of virtues or merits. When imagine or visualize our bodies towards suffering or towards beings who have been freed of their suffering, first we send our bodies to the beings of hot hell and we transform or we imagine our bodies have transformed into wish fulfilling jewels and our bodies in the form of wish fulfilling jewels then imagine go towards hot hell beings. And the moment the jewels reach the realm of hot hell, they transform into refreshing cooling drizzling rainfall and soothing cool feelings. At other times you can visualize that our bodies in the form of wish fulfilling jewels have transformed into spiritual teachers and giving teachings. Imagine that our bodies in the form of spiritual teachers are giving teachings to them and to help the hot hell beings to the extent that they are about to achieve the full enlightenment.
So let’s visualize that these things are taking place. I’m sorry to say that we don’t have much time. Otherwise, it’s not the way of teaching this way. What we do, what is done, what is the practice followed, the traditional practice followed is one of such sections is dealt with and teaching elaborate discussions or explanations are given. And then the students are asked to meditate on that particular section.
And only when they have developed realizations on that particular section then the teacher goes on to deal with the second topic or second section that’s how things are taught and practiced in Tibet and you know when both the master and the teacher and the students have plenty of time but we don’t have time to do such a thing here here so therefore I had to give teachings as such but what you can do is you can listen to the teachings and you can take notes and try to remember them and practice yourself. These teachings I have received from eminent masters and masters who are emanations of past great beings. And I’m quite sure because I’ve received the rich transmission from such glorious masters, these teachings, if you pay heed to some of them and practice, will have impact and will definitely will prove fruitful. We got teachings on these and then we had to meditate at least two times a day on the teachings and otherwise you know you wouldn’t be allowed to go to the teachings. They are indeed very nice and useful if you make it a point not to forget because I have transmitted to you what I have got from my precious masters and then I have also supplemented from such teachings with the teachings of Śāntideva and Indian pandits.
The junior tutor would repeat four times the things that he had taught and would ask the students whether they understood every point or not. And only when was sure that students had understood him, then he would go to the next section or topic. Further, the junior tutor used to tell us that although the world is passing through a very bad time, hard times, but he said we couldn’t have got better time at a time when we have met with Dharma teachings, genuine teachers and when we have been reborn as humans with precious human life. So he said no other time could be better for us than these. And although the world at large is passing the critical time, so no time will be better for us than this.
Thus, He thus said, make most of this precious time.