Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 46-minute teaching, Geshe Sonam Rinchen introduces the six perfections, the core practices that encapsulate all bodhisattva activity on the path to enlightenment. He opens by framing why these practices matter: they develop the inner conditions needed for sustained spiritual progress and enable effective help for others. Rinchen walks through how each perfection—generosity, ethics, patience, perseverance, concentration, and wisdom—combines to produce both the accumulation of positive energy and insight required for enlightenment. He then zooms in on their practical value now: how generosity secures future resources, ethics produces a good body and mind, patience brings supportive friends and a pleasant appearance, perseverance sustains effort without exhaustion, concentration opens extrasensory powers useful for understanding others’ needs, and wisdom allows clear ethical guidance. The teaching ends with a detailed exploration of generosity itself—distinguishing the inner attitude of non-attachment from mere action, and describing three kinds: giving teachings, protection, and material help. Suited to practitioners with some foundation in Mahāyāna Buddhist concepts.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 01 6PQ.mp3
UUID: dfb27e51-708e-410f-a494-dab90aca46ef
Teacher: Geshe Sonam Rinchen
Collection: The Six Perfect Qualities (Geshe Sonam Rinchen)
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 46.1 minutes
Words: ~4,061
The great Indian practitioner and scholar, Śāntideva, said that we’ve managed to acquire this precious human body and mind, which is like a ship that can carry us across the sea, across the ocean of worldly existence. If we don’t manage to use it now, it will be really difficult to find such a vessel in future. So what what we need to do is to establish our future well-being, establish lasting future well-being now with the body and mind that we have at this very time. So when we’re here together today, we should think we’re here to do something really meaningful, to do something which is going to be of long term benefit, and that we are human beings with enormous potential and capacity, and we can actually achieve what we aim to achieve with body and mind that we now possess. What we need to do then is to take action.
But in order to know what kind of action we need to take, we need guidance. We need guidance from Buddhadharma. Dharma. So we need guidance, and we need to listen to certain instructions which will help accomplish our ends. And when we listen to the instructions, we should do so with an attitude of wishing to benefit not only ourselves, but wishing to benefit all living beings, not only temporarily, but to bestow on them or to help them reach lasting and completely stable kind of happiness which is free from every kind of problem and suffering.
It is therefore important when we begin to adjust our motivation, to correct or adjust it, set it in the right direction, to set our intention and at the end of our activities to dedicate or steer the positive energy that we create in a good and constructive direction. These two activities are of prime importance. Geshe-la received a letter in India to say that he was requested to teach the six perfections here. The six perfections are very important because everything a bodhisattva does, every aspect of his practice can be subsumed under these six, so they can be included within these six practices. So I want to tell you about the six perfections in a way which is not necessarily philosophical, but in a way which you can easily relate to and understand, and maybe in a way which will help you to find something that you can practice right here and now at this point.
The only problem is that the six perfections is a vast subject and it is extremely difficult to explain it quickly and in a concise form. There is so much that has to be explained within it, really. It’s difficult you end up saying generosity is generosity and ethics is ethics! When we talk about the six perfections, a perfection is in this context the practice of a bodhisattva. And even if others practice these particular kinds of activities, they are not going to count as perfections.
So what does that tell us? That when we engage in these kind of practices, when we do these activities, it is necessary necessary that they be accompanied by a good, a kind hearted thought. That’s the least. And at best, the altruistic attitude, in other words, bodhicitta, the idea of wanting to achieve full enlightenment in order to be totally efficacious in helping others. So that’s the best kind of motivation, of course.
But anyway, it needs to be accompanied by a basic thought of kindness, of of good intention. And that if he goes into an explanation of what bodhicitta actually is at this point, it will be difficult. He is just making a little joke, because one evening he helped in the meditation here and explained about repaying the kindness of all motherly sentient beings. And then he said, By now, probably everybody has become a bodhisattva in a few days, which has been in between. So I said, Well, not everybody was here that day.
But it is necessary for us to do the practices, to cultivate the practices which are going to give us this kind of expanded attitude, this kind of all encompassing attitude which a bodhisattva has that he is able to think about all living beings instead of just a few. So when we think of a bodhisattva’s attitude, we often call that attitude bodhicitta. We use a Sanskrit word because it’s a simple word. When we try to translate it into English it becomes a long thing. We can also maybe just shorten it into the altruistic attitude.
What is this attitude which a bodhisattva has? He is is concerned with others. Others means every other living being, including the smallest insects. So what does he want for them? He wants to achieve their well-being.
That well-being can be on many different levels. It can be ordinary relief from suffering, ordinary happiness, but all kinds of happiness right through to the most perfect happiness, the most lasting and stable happiness that one attains with enlightenment. So he is not excluding any creature at all from his focus. There no creature excluded at all from his perspective. He wants to give them all from the smallest happiness right through to the most perfect and complete happiness.
He wants to give them every kind of happiness that they could possibly need and he includes every living creature without exception in his view. So his main preoccupation is getting all those living creatures to a state of bliss, to a state of happiness. That’s his main preoccupation. As a means to achieving that, he himself wants to attain enlightenment. His attainment of enlightenment is simply, is merely a means to enable others to attain happiness.
If we are very thirsty, the thing that is going to remove our thirst is water. So if you are very thirsty and you are standing next to a well, you want water but in order to get the water from the well, you need a bucket to bring it up. So his attainment of enlightenment is like the bucket you need to get the water up. But others happiness is like the water, the main thing he wants. This explains what a bodhisattva is thinking.
That thought is quite spontaneous with him. It’s there all the time. He is completely concerned with others’ well-being, with trying to achieve the most perfect kind of well-being and happiness for others. In order to do that, as a means to enable him to be totally effective in doing this, he must become enlightened. He wishes to become enlightened only for that reason.
So one has to understand the emphasis. That’s very important. Then in order to become enlightened, of course, he must practice the six perfections. The six perfections through which he will attain enlightenment. Our aim should be to try and generate that attitude ourselves.
It’s possible. We can do so, but it takes effort. If we are able, if we succeed in generating that attitude and it comes just automatically becomes completely spontaneous and constant, then we have become bodhisattvas. If you have got that in your heart, then it doesn’t matter whether you are a Western person or an Eastern person, whether you are a man or a woman, whoever you are, you are a Bodhisattva. Geshe-la says, You never know maybe, even someone in this room has bodhicitta.
You can’t tell from people’s appearances. He says that having this thought, cultivating this attitude and being able to have it spontaneously in one’s heart is much more important than practicing certain types of concentration meditation which can allow you to fly around in the sky for a bit. Everything good and all happiness comes from this kind of thought. So please make some effort to help it to grow in your heart. So, Bodhisattva thinks I am going to attain enlightenment for the sake of all other living beings.
For that reason, I’m going to involve myself in the practice of the six perfections. But then thinking it isn’t enough. It says if we sit here and we say we want to go to the zoo, sitting here isn’t going to do any good. We’ve actually got to get up and go. I don’t think he means the zoo, he means the wildlife park because we had a lovely visit with Kathy and Martine to the wildlife park yesterday and saw the koala bears.
Again, it means that you’re not going to be able to cuddle a koala bear if you sit here and just think about how nice it would be. So you actually have to go there. In the same way, if we want to practice the perfections, we have to actually do something about it. We have to involve ourselves in action. The practice of the perfections is necessary for achieving enlightenment.
It’s not like getting in a plane. You can’t go to Buddhahood by plane. You can only reach enlightenment by going slowly by a certain slow process of practice. So we’re after our aim is Buddhahood, fully enlightenment for the sake of all living creatures. When we consider full enlightenment, enlightenment, there are two aspects.
There is the wisdom truth body, the wisdom body of a Buddha which is as it were for his own benefit. Then there is the form body of a Buddha, the form bodies of a Buddha which are for others benefit. We have to achieve both of these. The wisdom body and the form bodies. In order to achieve both the wisdom body and the form bodies, you have to do two different things.
You have to accumulate positive energy to achieve the form bodies and you have to accumulate insights in order to achieve the wisdom body. The first five perfections, that is generosity, ethics, patience, perseverance. We just go back for a minute. Generosity, ethics and patience are associated with the method side of practice, with the skillful means side of practice. Yeah.
The first five generosity, ethics, patience, perseverance and concentration belong to the method side of practice, to the skillful means side of practice. The first three of those generosity, ethics and patience particularly belong to the collection of positive energy or potential. The last two belong to the wisdom side of practice. The last two can be said to belong to the wisdom side of practice and are specifically associated with the accumulation of insights. And then there was perseverance.
So we had the first three which are associated with the collection of positive energy and the last two which are associated with the collection of insight and then we have perseverance which is associated with both of these because you won’t do either of these effectively unless you have perseverance and So we’ve said what the aim is. The aim is to attain these two bodies of a Buddha and the six perfections lead to the attainment of those two bodies of a Buddha, the wisdom of a Buddha and the form of a Buddha. These six perfections lead to that and Geshe-la has shown how they lead to it through a combination of method and wisdom, or skillful means and wisdom, through a combination of the collection of positive energy and insight. So in this context, we are not talking about tantric practice at all. We set that aside.
So if you follow this particular avenue, if you follow this approach, it’s going to take you many lifetimes. In all those lifetimes, if we want to continue our path towards full enlightenment, we need to have a favorable rebirth. In other words, we need a good body and mind, a good working basis. So what what gives us such a good working basis? A good body is achieved through the practice of ethics.
So our good physical and mental makeup say of a human being is achieved through the practice of ethics. The prerequisites we need are possessions. Resources that we need are achieved through the practice of generosity. Through our practice of patience, we are able to acquire helpful friends. We acquire helpful friends, people who will support us, who will help us.
Also, we acquire a pleasant an attractive physique. Geshe-la says if you haven’t got patience anyway, you can’t even buy friends for money. Then we all also need the ability to carry through our actions not simply to begin something and then find that we can’t carry it through. We need the ability to complete, to conclude whatever we undertake. And that ability comes from the practice of perseverance.
And then for us to be effective, for us to be truly effective in our passage towards enlightenment, we also need to be able to avoid being dominated by negative emotions. So we have to be able to escape domination of negative emotions. And for this concentration is of great benefit. And in order to distinguish clearly what is going to be constructive and what is going to be non constructive or even destructive, we need discrimination or wisdom. And in this way you can see that in order for our progress to be a steady one towards enlightenment, we must practice all six of the perfections.
So even for the achievement of a good body and mind in the next life we need to practice these six perfections now. When we’re talking about what can be achieved with such a body, then there are two things of course, your own well-being and others well-being. Others’ well-being, Others well-being is achieved through the practice of the first three. That’s quite obvious. Generosity, ethics and patience are very beneficial for others.
The last three are specifically beneficial for achieving one’s own aims. In other words perseverance, concentration and the cultivation of wisdom. So I mean it doesn’t mean that they are exclusive. The first three are exclusively useful for others and the last three exclusively useful for oneself. But one can make a general division of this sort.
But also all six are useful for helping others, for helping others, for achieving their well-being. If we think of generosity generosity and there are many different kinds of generosity and he’ll discuss some aspects of generosity. Generosity of material things, material generosity can of course alleviate others hardships and suffering. So we are showing now, he is showing how the six are very useful from the point of view of others and their well-being and their happiness. So of course generosity, the practice of generosity in its various forms is directed towards others relieving their difficulties.
Then the practice of ethics. Ethics is all about restraint from violence, from different forms of violence, subtle and crude forms of violence. If one is able to restrain oneself from acting in violent ways of course others benefit from that. And what about patience? Patience means that you are able to tolerate certain kinds of harm from others, so you don’t have this instant need to retaliate.
As soon as you don’t have this instant need to retaliate, of course it’s of benefit to the other and possibly even if you are able not to get all involved and excited about retaliating, you can even think of something which might be useful or beneficial for that other person. So in that way it’s really positive too. So we know perfectly well that if we don’t have patience or tolerance and something bad happens, we immediately get upset, become very ruffled. When you are in that state of mind, when you are really disturbed, you are quite incapable of doing something constructive for other people. What is perseverance or we sometimes say enthusiasm?
Enthusiastic effort. It’s taking a delight in doing wholesome or constructive things. It’s a delight in that. Of course, if one has delight in that, then one won’t feel tired. One won’t feel tired, one won’t feel discouraged even if one’s work for others takes quite a lot of effort.
One will be able to tolerate the effort because one is taking a delight in what one is doing. So the hard work that has to be done may be the same. But if you approach it with delight because you are aware of what positive ends it is achieving or why you are doing it or so on. If you approach it with delight, it’s not going to make you feel so tired. Whereas if you are resisting it, if you actually don’t want to be doing it but you find yourself forced to do it because you are in a certain situation, then it’s going to drain you and you’re going to feel tired.
And then, how your concentration, how do your powers of concentration benefit others? Well, takes a bit of time to achieve. But if you practice concentration hard, correctly, over a long enough period, then you’re able to do all sorts of extraordinary things. You acquire extrasensory powers, clairvoyant powers, sort of magical powers actually. Then with those you can often help to subdue people who would be difficult to subdue.
Sometimes people are convinced by something like that. If you want to try and lead them and help them and can display some extraordinary power to them, it sometimes brings them round so that they are more open to what you might want to tell them about. In some ways we need to work at acquiring these extra sensory powers. There are five different kinds of eyes, they are called in Tibetan. Five different kinds of eyes.
They are powers which let you see below the ground and all sorts of things and other people’s thoughts and so on. Five kinds of eyes and six different kinds of extrasensory powers. These powers in themselves are really quite useful if directed in the right way. If used in the constructive way, they can be very useful for helping people because you can see what they need, what their real disposition is, what will be most appropriate for them. So if they are used correctly, they can be of great benefit to others.
Yeah. So this is important even though it seems a little tangent. But nevertheless it is very, very important because we want to help people now. We know that it’s only when they’ve explained their problem at great length and then we can start to think about what they need and so on and so on. We can only be effective in that way at present.
We have to listen first to what they have to say and then maybe they are not able to express themselves quite clearly or they actually want to say something different but they can’t verbalize it. Then we have to react to what they are saying and so on. How much more effective it would be if one could just intuitively understand what is going on in their minds, one could intuit their problem and be able to apply the remedy as it were quite simply like that without having to go through all this verbiage. And with wisdom, with the wisdom that allows you to see what’s going to be constructive and what isn’t, enables you also to help others, explain to others in a very clear and reasonable way why certain actions are not constructive, why they are destructive and so on. So you can really guide and help other people effectively if you yourself have gained wisdom, have developed wisdom.
So this is just a summary of how all six of the perfections are necessary, how we need them to achieve what we wish to achieve and how they are useful in our work for others. From that of course we can gain something which is useful even now in our daily life. We also have to talk about each of the perfections individually. Actually, one develops them in that order. One is able to generate or to develop generosity first and then on the basis of that generosity one develops ethics and so on.
So it’s a gradual process and there’s a reason why they’re in that order. They’re in that order because they actually are generated in that order. Mean you can practice them all but the insights, actual practice occurs when it becomes really intuitive. When you’ve really developed an instinct for that practice, a real feeling for that practice. They come in that order.
Of the six perfections, the first is generosity. We also have another Bodhisattva activity which is very important and that is the four ways of ripening or maturing others. The four ways of ripening or maturing others. So this is another bodhisattva activity apart from the six perfections. Comes first also.
Then there are three ways of creating positive energy. Positive energy through generosity, positive energy through ethics and positive energy through meditation. So these three ways of creating positive energy are mentioned elsewhere in Sūtra and in that also generosity is mentioned first. Why did the Buddha emphasize giving first in all these cases? Because a human life is not much good unless one has resources.
One needs certain basic resources to make a human life decent. So although we need to make effort in this life, I mean we can’t just sit back and expect the resources to just sort of land in our lap. It’s not like that. One needs to make some effort, but nevertheless the real underlying cause for one’s enjoyment of resources is that one has practiced generosity in the past. So it’s not actually the amount of effort you put in at this time.
Although you do need to make some effort, but whether one does or does not have resources in fact finally depends on what one did in the past, whether one practiced generosity in the past. So it’s very important if we want in future to enjoy resources, the prerequisites that we need, we need practice generosity. When we talk about generosity By the way, is this loud enough at the back? Is it? Yeah?
When we talk about generosity, there are three kinds of generosity. In fact, I mean, every other kind of generosity can probably be included under these three. So you have the generosity of giving the teachings, of spiritual instruction. Generosity of giving protection and generosity of giving material help. So material generosity.
Those are the three kinds of generosity. So he says, actually I need to go into all this in great detail because if I am to talk about generosity we have to define first what is meant by generosity. We have to understand clearly what generosity means and what its function is, what its qualities are. If we don’t look at these things, then it won’t be helpful for us in the future. If we don’t understand ourselves what is meant by generosity and tell others to practice generosity, it’s all too vague, you know.
We don’t really know what we are talking about. Generosity isn’t just the action of handing over something. It’s to do with your state of mind. We call generosity first of all the state of not being heavily attached to your body and possessions. So that’s the prerequisite attitude that you’re not heavily attached to your body and possessions.
Of course it is very difficult to get rid of that attachment completely, but you must be working at diminishing it. With this diminished attachment to body and possessions, one performs some physical or verbal action of giving. Actions of body and mind, physical and verbal actions all stem from the mind. Merely overcoming miserliness with respect to one’s possessions, one’s body. Overcoming miserliness, possessiveness with respect to one’s body and possessions is not the practice of generosity.
It’s not the practice of the perfection of generosity. People with great insight who belong to the lower vehicle, not the Mahāyāna They certainly have overcome this possessiveness, this sense of meanness or miserliness with respect to their own bodies and possessions. But they haven’t achieved the perfection of generosity. It’s not just overcoming something negative. It’s actually generating a positive attitude on the basis of understanding how positive it is to be generous and how detrimental it is to be mean.