Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Geshe Nawang Dhargyey delivers a 48-minute public talk examining the nature of delusion and its role in human suffering. He opens with a discussion of karma and collective action before focusing on how passion, anger, and jealousy function as delusions that disturb our peace of mind and diminish our capacity to enjoy life. He illustrates through vivid examples how anger distorts perception, erases gratitude, and destroys accumulated virtue—even citing a Tibetan Buddhist story of a past incarnation of the Buddha whose tolerance cured a patient. The core teaching explores why these mental states are eliminable: they merely veil the mind’s naturally clear and awakened nature, like clouds obscuring the sun. Geshe then addresses the systematic path to uproot delusions through three higher trainings—morality, concentration, and wisdom—beginning with concrete steps like abandoning killing, and concludes by drawing parallels between Buddhist ethics and Christian teachings on love and compassion for enemies.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 02 PT 1985 04 28.mp3
UUID: c31c0ecf-f384-4ed5-ba0f-147f4f0344a1
Teacher: Geshe Nawang Dhargyey
Collection: Public Talk (Geshe Nawang Dhargyey)
Date: 1985-04-28
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 48.7 minutes
Words: ~3,809
Affected are are all results of their actions in the past. That that none of us here are similar, have different facial features and looks. It’s all determined by some past action. And our intelligence, our mental caliber differs is also determined by past actions. And that people in Australia at large are materially well off is because of their collective action of generosity or engaging in the practice of generosity in the past.
So actions can affect an individual no. A person individually, and then his happiness or his suffering will be governed by his own individual action. And actions performed by a community in collectively can can affect a community collectively. The result, the fact that Australians are enjoying a very happy material life is the result of collective result of collective actions performed in the past. Like, you know, people have been very generous in the past.
And now to deal more specifically about the delusions. A delusion is a state of mind, which when develops in one’s mind, then, you know, makes one unhappy, unpeaceful, and extremely disturbed. Now some of the delusions are like passion, hatred and anger, jealousy and so on. Whenever passion develops, the person grows so agitated, restless. So that is a clear indication that passion or desire is a is a delusion.
And similarly, when when anger develops in our mind, then we get possessed by anger. And when we are possessed by anger, we are deprived of our own peace of mind and such that even though we may eat a very delicious food, so our tongue consciousness is as though numbed by anger, and we we don’t enjoy our food. And when we live in a beautiful house or so we lie on a beautiful bed, our bed, yet when we are angry, so we roll from side to side and will remain quite unhappy. Thus, the same thing with regards to jealousy. These are clear indications.
The reason why one one grows so perturbed, so agitated, so unpeaceful is because these are these states of mind, these negative states of mind are are delusions or these these are delusions. Now delusions, as you know, cause immediate suffering of making us unpeaceful and and then also causing us suffering in the long run, having to experience misery and unhappiness in the future, we should come to regard our delusions as our real enemies. Especially anger, you know, it’s very destructive and very harmful in that. You know, when anger crops up in a person’s mind, it makes the person quite unhappy, quite disturbed, and it also then the person, in turn, makes others unhappy and unpeaceful. And not only that, not not only is anger harmful in the immediate sense, not only is anger harmful in the present time, but also anger is very destructive in that anger destroys all goodness and good fortune we have, virtues we have collected in the past.
Therefore, we must make an attempt not to come under anger. When someone’s angry and then anger is read large on his face, and his face then gets distorted, and he has a very repulsive expression about his face. And even though such a person may be well dressed and is sort of richly adorned with the various ornaments, so he doesn’t look at all beautiful or handsome, but, you know, looks uglier than before. As mentioned earlier, once a person has a person is possessed by anger, so he will not he won’t he won’t become he will lose his sense of judgment. And, you know, even though he may be enjoying his good food, he will he will not enjoy it.
And even though he’s in a beautiful park, a park which normally a beautiful park which normally has a good effect on people’s mood will not make that person an angry person at all a happy person. Then if we have if we don’t have anger, it’s extremely peaceful. Like, there are some couples who haven’t shown anger to each other and such that they always live in peace, whereas there are many unhappy couples who keep on showing anger to each other and perpetuate anger in each other and live their life in misery. That’s you know, although anger is very deadly and very harmful, yet it’s quite pity that we always fall under the influence of anger. So much so that we can never give a guarantee to someone that one.
So one hasn’t grown and no. One one hasn’t grown, you know, angry during the day. So it’s very hard to give a written guarantee that one will not grow angry during the day. And this past account of the Buddha when before he attained the state of a Buddhahood or in Buddhahood, he had been reborn as a great king. When Buddha had been reborn as a king, then one of his subjects took very ill, and all the famous doctors of the time were summoned to investigate the sickness of the patient.
And then the doctors could conclude through the investigation of the sickness of the patient that he need that he needed the blood some blood of a person who did not who did not go, you know, grow angry during his entire lifetime, and this was reported to the king. And then the king issued a declaration whether there’s anyone, any subject in his kingdom who did not grow angry during his entire lifetime. And, naturally, it was a failure to not to if the king failed to find such a subject. And because not one subject was found who did not grow and angry during his entire lifetime, Then the king said, in that case, you can take my own blood, some blood from me because I’m I did not get angry during my entire lifetime. Just as the patient was given the king’s blood, the blood of a most tolerant person in the entire lifetime, the patient was cured.
Thus, if only if not we can uproot anger, even if we manage to suppress or overcome, manifest gross anger, so that will also go to ensure, you know, real peace and joy in one’s life. Anger also blurs one’s sense of judgment as I said earlier that one for one grows tends to grow very forgetful. Even though, you know, one’s parents have an extremely kind to one or, like, if one has a friend who is extremely kind to one, then when a person comes under the influence of anger or if as it were being possessed by anger, then he forgets all the kindnesses that his parents have done to him or all the help and assistance or kindnesses that his closest friend has shown to him such that he even goes he goes to the extent of speaking very harshly or reviling at them. When that anger accentuates in the mind stream of the person, then he’s not only does he speak harshly, most unkindly to the kind persons, but he even goes to the extent of, you know, beating them up and so forth, inflicting a violent actions on them. Although we cannot uproot anger suddenly, but we can still up you know, eliminate anger.
So the only way we can uproot anger or eliminate anger is by contemplating or by reflecting on the disadvantages, on the crippling disadvantages of anger. And that’s day by day, you know, trying to overcome first gross anger. And later, as one forms the habit of checking whether one’s mind has grown anger angry or not, and whether anger has influenced one’s mind or not, then one will come to weaken anger first. And once anger is weakened, then it’s quite near to it’s quite near that the person is near to total elimination, and a time will come when such a person can totally uproot anger from his mental continuum. And this is how this is how deluded thoughts that we have are certainly quite quite definitely eliminable.
And once these are eliminated, the true nature of our mind will come to surface, and that’s, you know, that’s that’s how our minds grow more and more awakened and attain the state of perfection. In the past, you know, the Buddhas were not Buddhas enlightened causelessly or from no causelessly. They were also deluded beings like us, but they made constant attempts to weaken strong delusions. And through weakening them, thus, they were able to to uproot delusions or deluded thoughts from their mind stream. And thus, once these have been uprooted, their minds their minds were totally awakened and attained the highest perfection that human mind can achieve, and that is called the Buddha.
So the state of Buddhahood is also quite achievable and, you know, quite attainable even by all of us if only we make an attempt towards that. And we believe that deluded thoughts that our minds have are separate from the minds themselves. And thus, those delusions or those unhealthy attitudes are definitely eliminable. They are because delusions or the delusional thoughts have not entered or altered the basic clear nature of our minds. And because these have not entered or altered the basic clear nature of our human mind or our mind, Thus, these we the mind our mind can shed shed the faults of delusions.
And once delusions are so for delusions of which like a form of covering factor of mind’s eliminated, a clear nature of the mind will come to manifest. And once that is achieved, then it does one know the mind has fully awakened. One many examples are given how delusions are eliminable because they have not altered the basic nature of our minds. Like, if delusions had entered and altered the basic nature of our minds, then our attempts to remove faults from our minds would be futile attempts just as it would be futile to wash the blackness of coal. But but that’s not the case with mud.
And our minds are only temporarily covered by delusions in the same way as, you know, the the sky is temporarily overcast by the clouds, and we cannot see the sun. And in the same way as, you know, the water is muddy temporarily, but the basic nature of the water is clear clarity and so on. Similarly, delusions have only veiled and covered the mind from outside temporarily. And because this is a temporary thing, we can definitely remove such a temporary of a factor. Here, let me quote an an eminent Indian Buddhist master called Śāntideva.
In one of his famous works, he has said, delusions that we are under which we always fall or, you know, who under whose influence we always remain. Delusions are, in fact, not that courageous or warrior-like, are not courageous, and they don’t have weapons, and they don’t have a strong arms and strong legs that, you know, that, you know, that make us, you know, their victims. And it’s quite pathetic. He’s pathetic. It’s a he says that although delusions are not that strong and clever and wise and so on, Yet throughout beginningless time, we have fallen under the delusions, under the influence of delusions, and it’s very pathetic that we have fallen under such a weak factors.
It’s just the reason why he says we have fallen under the influence of delusions. These weak delusions is because we have not made attempt attempt to overcome, to rise above delusions. And we have our perseverance has failed, not, you know, not the teachings. Now passion and anger stem from ignorance. We know that passion and anger are very detrimental to our, you know, physical and mental welfare or well-being.
Now in passion and anger can be temporarily suppressed and removed through applying the specific antidote, in order to uproot these uproot these two, so we need to uproot our ignorance. Ignorance I know the misconception, the basic misconception that’s ignorance. And because ignorance is the root of these two delusions, passion, anger, therefore, we need to uproot our ignorance or cut through ignorance. Ignorance is like the root of the tree. And in order to destroy the tree, we need to destroy the root.
And, similarly, we need to destroy or cut through ignorance, which is the root of the two other delusions, passion and anger. In the meanwhile, before we could abandon, you know, the two delusions like passion and anger, and we should try to apply the specific temporary antidote to these. In order to overcome gross passion, we must develop non-attachment, we must try to develop the loathsome understanding that the objects of attachment are in fact repulsive and loathsome. And the things to to which we’re attached, in fact, are quite do quite loathsome and repulsive. And then if we could develop this understanding, this understanding can temporarily avoid or avoid strong gross passion.
And in order to temper apply specific temporary antidotes to anger, we have to we have to develop love for beings and, you know, up and also develop patience or tolerance. And then in order to uproot ignorance, we have to develop an antidote in the form of an understanding that all things are dependent arising. And now with this, I will stop here and welcome any questions that you you may have. The master said the delusions stem from their causes and asked him what are the causes. And he said the causes are, you know, things apprehended by a deluded mind.
Attachment is a delusion, and attachment is caused by a by a phenomenon or by a thing which on which the quality of attractiveness is imposed by the mind. And in fact, there are many causes of delusions, familiarity and objective condition, and object objects and object condition, and so on. Familiarity with delusions in the past, then can cause delusion in the present lifetime. And then, you know, objects that we see, various objects that we see can also cause our mind affect our mind and then give rise to different types of unhealthy thoughts. Like, if you go to the, you know, if you go to shopping center, then although you don’t have to buy all the things, but while going through the shopping center, you see hundred different things that are attractive.
And, you know, you develop at least attachment towards such a things to those things. And while seeing your unfriendly person, like your enemy, and although anger was not there before you saw him, but the moment you see him, anger is caused by such a person. So that’s called such things such things are called objective condition for arousal of delusions. From the Buddhist point of view, such a From Buddhist point of view, such a power of mind can be developed, you know, undergoing three stages. First is intensive study of the Buddhist philosophy, if you are to, you know, try to look for means Buddhist means, then it entails intensive study of Buddhism and not only just superficial acquaintance with the studies of Buddhism, things of Buddhism, but contemplating what you have studied or what you have heard about Buddhism.
And then after you have contemplated over various points, then you would have come to you would come to a certain conclusively concluded point, and you have to meditate or concentrate single pointed on such a thing. And only then such a power of mind to to affect adversely those delusions can arise. Now another way to develop such power of mind, strength of mind, is first again, we need two things here. The first is we need the power of morality. We we must live a very pure life, you know, pure life and observe certain morality, and there are different forms of morality.
The basic morality is the morality of abandoning those ten non virtues, three non-virtues of body, four of speech, and three of mind. Plus, after you have lived such a ethical life and a very pure life, then you must follow the next step of developing power of mind. And the power of mind can be developed then through development of single pointed concentration or med meditation. And after you have developed single pointed concentration, a very great power of mind, then you must develop, you know, the wisdom to probe into the ultimate reality of all phenomena. And that’s these engaging in the practice of these morality, concentration, and wisdom are called the three methods of higher training.
Thus, if anyone can apply or engage in the practice of these three, it’s it’s quite sure that such a person will be quite successful in totally abandoning the delusions. That’s we have to train ourselves in these, you step by step and then develop the power of mind. Now with regard to morality, we have one can talk a lot about morality and talk a lot about the in the different forms of morality and stress importance of morality, but difficult to live one’s life by those morality. Therefore, when one must it’s difficult to practice morality, and we cannot practice all of them like abandoning all the ten non-virtues at one time. But we can make an attempt at least in abandoning killing.
And if you have been successful in abandoning killing, you would have observed one item of morality, and this will, you know, give you strength to go on to the next step of practicing morality. And thus, once you have been able to live a very pure life on the basis of a moral life, then you would have laid out a sound ground for developing concentration. And like the great earth is the basis for existence of animate and inanimate objects. Entire such both the things, animate and inanimate, are dependent on earth. Similarly, it is on the basis of a strong moral life morality, then a strong concentration can be developed.
And it’s on the basis of a strong concentration, then a very sharp, powerful wisdom to to be able to probe deep into the ultimate reality of all phenomena can be, you know, developed. That’s how we have to it’s a very long process. Buddhism views Jesus as a great, you know, teacher And teachings that that Jesus Christ gave in many ways are very similar to Buddhist teachings, like abandonment of hatred for enemy, developing yet compassion for the enemy, the same enemy, and generosity, morality. There is some knowledge of Christianity, and I know that there are very common points, common basis between Buddhism and Christianity. What the good thing would be to be more open followers of different religious systems if they can grow a bit more open, like Christians studying what Buddhism has to say about, you know, life, about freedom from suffering, and Buddhists, and if Buddhists immerse themselves in Christian bibles and, you know, study bible and see what good points such Buddhists can gather or can take from Christian bible.
And, you know, there are so many common things, and then those common things can be accepted and put in practice. And if, you know, a person has studied both Buddhism and Christianity, he will come to understand that there are very many there are many common points with regard to love, for instance. Buddhism also teaches that we must develop love for all sentient beings. And especially in order to develop love for all living beings, the first test of developing love is love for one’s enemy because it’s the hardest to develop love for enemy. The same thing is said in Christianity that you must first you must love your enemy more than yourself.
So like that, there are many, many sort of common points. I personally think, you know, one of the ways to I personally think that only you know, one of the ways to overcome or to remove such a complexity in our society is, again, to reduce or, you know, to reduce wrong attitude that we have towards life, basically. And as as I told you, people in the past, although they did have delusion, but the delusions were not so rampant and so so intense. And as we, you know, move with time, people tend to grow more and more degenerated, and this degeneration is caused by rampant delusions and strong also intense delusions that we have. And the only way to correct such a or to solve this problem is to, I think personally, to weaken and then reduce delusions.
Like, people have to spend sleepless nights overthinking or pondering over problems. And then I think this can be overcome by developing an understanding that the world that we live is is called worldly existence. And in in the world existence, we cannot expect more than problems and miseries, misfortunes one after the other. And it’s pointless to think over these when these are inevitable. So why not have a sound sleep?
You know, then if such an understanding how this world is unavoidably full of suffering. And then, you know, once such an understanding is developed, I think a person can at least have a night’s sleep. And also, one should not let disturbing thoughts in the first place develop or crop up in one’s mind. And we call it preconceptions or preconceptions when a person mind when the person’s mind is experiences influx of preconceptions, then groundless worries, you know, so torment that person and to even go to the extent of worrying that the sky might fall on his head and say this kind of thing. So preconceptions are very bad indeed.
Yet a person who has developed a very firm understanding of the nature of a worldly life and what is best to what what to what we can remove sufferings in our life, and so on. And especially, there are some people, religious people, who grows who tend to grow stronger and stronger while they while they face difficulties. They because they regard that as inevitable circum circumstance in world existence. And thus, instead of being depressed and being cowed by such unhappy circumstance, they grow spiritually stronger. In fact, they attribute all our misfortunes and problems, hardship that we face to our own self-cherishing thought.
So it’s our selfish love that we have that is in fact the underlying cause for all those disturbing thoughts to come up in our mind and for all the problems that afflict our, you know, our life. If one offers selfish interest, then another person’s worries increase. [end of recording].