Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Three similes — gold buried in ore, a sky thick with clouds, muddy water left to settle — give Khensur Rinpoche’s 49-minute commentary on the awakening heart its central image. He opens with Ārya Maitreya’s definition: the fully qualified awakening heart has two parts — a genuine wish to bring all beings to temporal and ultimate happiness, and the personal resolve to attain Buddhahood in order to achieve this. He then surveys the six practices (generosity, ethics, patience, joyous effort, concentration, wisdom) as practical means for leading others to temporal welfare. The three similes demonstrate that mental defilements are adventitious — not intrinsic to mind — and can therefore be removed. The session closes on Śākyamūni’s paired maxim: method alone is bondage, wisdom alone is bondage; together, like two wings, they carry a practitioner to full awakening.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 39 3PA 1993 11 23.mp3
UUID: a7271ddd-f3c0-43e5-9067-8dc0d0bf35dd
Teacher: Khensur Rinpoche
Collection: 3 Principal Aspects of the Path (Khensur Rinpoche)
Date: 1993-11-23
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 49.1 minutes
Words: ~2,511
Yeah. I don’t need iron a general. Ārya Maitreya in his Ornament for Clear Realization says: mind generation is the aspiration to achieve highest enlightenment. This one. Yes.
Yeah. So what is meant by the term mind generation is that one has expanded extensively the breadth of one’s mind. It’s not a narrow-minded attitude, but it’s exceedingly broad. So it’s in the context of the universal vehicle. So we’re specifically discussing the universal vehicle mind generation and this this extremely expansive mind.
Definition of the awakening heart. So it is the seeking of authentic awakening or perfect awakening — enlightenment. And we are it is for the sake of all others. So by here for all others, it means whosoever, people or animals, even insects. And we’re seeking awakening for their sake.
And this for their sake, the purpose is to lead them to both temporal and ultimate happiness. In general, we can speak of two types of happiness. There’s temporal and finally ultimate. But so in order to lead all living beings to such a state of complete happiness, one’s self must become awakened. So within this definition, there are two parts.
There is the that aspect others for the sake of others in order to lead them to complete happiness, both temporal and ultimate. That’s the first part. Oneself will must attain awakening. So there are two objectives. The the leading of living beings to temporal and ultimate happiness and oneself in order to achieve that in attaining awakening.
Without incorporating both of these elements, then one does not have fully qualified mind generation. So here we’ve described that we’re seeking awakening in order to lead living beings to complete happiness constituted of both temporal and ultimate happiness. How do we bring about their temporal happiness? Temporal happiness is those types of happiness which are experienced previous to experiencing ultimate happiness. And how do we lead living beings to this temporal state of happiness, these temporal states of happiness?
We can involve ourselves in such means as, for examples, those who have no understanding of impermanence, who do not understand impermanence, who don’t have the sense, aren’t aware of impermanence, we can involve them in the meditation, cultivating understandings of impermanence. Those who have a great deal of miserliness, for example, we can lead them into through various means into lessening their their miserliness on the one hand and developing more generosity. Those who do not observe ethics, leading them through various means into observing the observation of ethics. Those who are extremely prone to anger, helping them to lessen their anger by various means and generate tolerance. Then further, for those who are lazy, who have no enthusiasm for Dharma, who have no longing to involve themselves in Dharma, helping by various means helping them to develop a joyous, a sense of joyous effort in the practice of Dharma.
Those who are whose minds are involved in constant distraction, helping them to stabilize their mind and develop meditative concentrations. Those who lack wisdom, whose minds are dominated by unskillful types of unproductive activities, helping them to develop wisdom and healthy ways of being, you know, introduced into wisdoms of emptiness and impermanence in the four noble truths, helping to turn their mind toward liberation and omniscience. So, you know, them in these through these remedial measures of and developing them helping them to generate develop generosity, ethics, and tolerance. Helping in their joyous effort, helping them to develop respect for the Dharma and generating gradually these various practices until they can go on to generate a meditative stabilization, wisdom of emptiness, and then they are able, by these means, to attain liberation. But moreover, combining these means with meditation and the cultivation of the awakening heart, whereby they can fully remove all of their various faults and bring into consummation all their excellent qualities, which represents the ultimate ultimate welfare of others.
So these are the temporal and ultimate welfares of others. And we this sense of a longing to bring about the welfare of others is constituted of a longing to to help others implement these means to attain these ends. So once one develops a longing to be able to bring about these two levels of the welfare of others, then one has has developed one part of the the qualification of the awakening heart. So with respect to these two parts of the fully qualified awakening heart, the first part being to this longing to bring about the welfare of others, both in terms of ultimate their ultimate and temporal welfare. Then the second part is that in order to bring about that this first part, one aspires to the attainment of awakening.
That in order to lead other living beings to both their state of their where their temporal and ultimate welfare has been brought about, that one oneself aspires to awaken, to awaken at some time in the future, to attain that state where one has removed all of one’s various faults and brought to consummation all of one’s excellent qualities. So the second part is, is brings about one’s own welfare, or this is for one’s own purpose. The first part was for the welfare of others or the purpose of others. So it’s both one’s own purpose and the purposes of others. So when it speaks about the this aspect of bringing about one’s own welfare or one’s own purpose, it’s not for one’s purpose alone that one is going to attain Buddhahood or that one’s going to attain awakening.
But it is one is attaining it for the sake of others in order to free them from their suffering, order to bring them happiness, in order to bring about both their ultimate and temporal happiness. That if understanding that if I don’t attain awakening, then there’s no way that I can be able to lead them to such a state. Therefore, I am going to attain this state for the sake of others. Understanding that until oneself, one oneself has attained awakening, that one will not be able to lead others to the state where you’re seeking to lead them to the state where they bring about where they’re both their temporal and ultimate welfare has had been completed. That until one achieves that state, one cannot lead them to such a state for so determining for the sake of all others that one is going to attain Buddhahood, and therefore one strives for Buddhahood for the sake of others.
So in the actual awakening heart, one initially develops a sense of wanting a wishing to bring about the temporal and ultimate welfare of others, to lead them to such a state. And one understands that until oneself has achieved that state, then one can never achieve the inward, this welfare of others which one wishes to bring about. So understanding that until oneself is awakened, one cannot lead them to this state of freedom from suffering where they have complete happiness. So therefore, one strives for awakening. So one one self achieves awakening.
Here, awakening is the same thing as the attainment of Buddhahood. So one having once attained awakening or Buddhahood, then one emanates a variety of, radiates out a variety of emanations according to all of the various dispositions and capacities of disciples. Radiates hundreds or thousands emanations putting on display. And these emanations are able to lead these beings to the state where they achieve both their temporal and ultimate happiness. In order to attain awakening, one must eliminate various obstacles or hindrance, certain defects which need to be eliminated.
So the elimination of all of these various faults is the bringing to is simultaneous with bringing to completion excellent qualities. So one must eliminate these various these various defects. Eliminate these various defects. So there are within our minds certain dysfunctional factors and the doubt may arise: can I eliminate these dysfunctional factors, these various faults? One may question.
So these dysfunctional factors within the mind are adventitious to the mind. That is to say they are incidental to the mind. They are not an integral part of the mind in the nature of the mind. They are not mixed with the mind. They are adventitious or incidental, accidental factors.
If they were actually integral to the mind, then there’s no way that we could be they could be eliminated. But since they’re adventitious, the mind can be freed of them. So how can we know that these dysfunctional factors of the mind can be removed? There is a verse by Ārya Maitreya which simply states: a jewel, space, and water are pure. And explaining this line, we can understand that, you know, that the gold ore, which is found beneath encrusted with various types of minerals, these minerals are not in the nature of the gold.
That through a process of refining, the gold can be made pure, that the various minerals encrusted upon the gold are adventitious to gold. They are not in the nature of the gold and therefore can be refined out and one is left with pure gold. So then the second simile in terms of space or the sky. During the rainy season, the sky is filled with clouds. And and but even though the the sky is filled with clouds, the clouds are adventitious to this the the clouds are adventitious to the sky.
They are not in the nature of the sky. And when when the winds come along, they blow the the clouds away, and the pure sky remains. And so he in this simile, the the mind is is analogous to the sky, and these various dysfunctional factors of the mind are the clouds. So just as that just as we all know quite readily that that the upon the wind blowing, the clouds move away and the sky is left clear. And likewise, that these dysfunctional factors, are similar to which are likened to clouds, can be completely removed from the mind, leaving just as the sky and leaving the purity of the mind.
And then this third simile concerning the water, that when the rains fall coming down the hillsides and bringing along along with them the silt and the mud. That if one were to capture this muddy water and simply let it sit for a few days, the mud has never become of the nature of the water, that it will settle out and you will be left with clear water. So again in this simile, the water is likened to the mind. The silt clouding the water, the dysfunctional factors within the mind. So we can understand through the use of these three similes that the dysfunctional factors can be eliminated from the mind and the the mind will will appear as it always has been, pure.
But these dysfunctional factors within our minds will not remove themselves. They will not go away in some haphazard manner. But we have to implement a method to remove these dysfunctional factors from our minds. So each of us has dysfunctional factors within our minds, and each of us must implement methods to remove them. So as we described in bringing about the methods of the welfare of the temporal welfare of others, that for those who are not initially inclined, inclining their minds toward the Dharma and then teaching them the Dharma.
And then helping them to develop a faith and respect with respect to the Dharma. And then helping them to lessen their miserliness, develop in the practice of generosity, turning their minds away from unethical practices and toward observation of ethics, helping them lessen their anger, develop tolerance, helping them to lessen their laziness and develop joyous effort, helping them to develop in their practices of meditative stabilization wisdom in terms of understanding emptiness and meditating on the four noble truths, and thereby leading them to a state where they can develop a wisdom realizing emptiness. So meditating on emptiness, realizing emptiness, and coming to understand that that it is realization of emptiness that the realization of emptiness has the potential to abandon what in fact is the root of all our dysfunctional factors of mind. That is to say, ignorance or grasping at the self of person’s, grasping at the self of phenomena. That these are the root of all our dysfunctional factors and these are to be abandoned.
And understanding that it is the wisdom realizing emptiness and ignorance are directly contradictory to one another. And that by the development of this wisdom are able to abandon ignorance, the root of all these factors. So we it is necessary that we understand that it is only the wisdom realizing emptiness which is able to has the capacity to remove the ignorance of the grasping of true existence. There is no other there is nothing other than the wisdom realizing emptiness which has this potential and ability. Understanding this then we understand that we need to meditate on emptiness that we without this wisdom realizing emptiness, there’s no way that we can abandon the root of all these dysfunctional patterns.
If we develop it, if we if we have the wisdom realizing emptiness, then we can remove ignorance, grasping at true existence, and all the afflictive emotions which arise from it along with the late their latencies, just like the wind blowing the clouds from the sky. But this wisdom, realizing emptiness, be must have an accompanying assistance. And we need a method to reinforce that wisdom. And this is this reinforcing, this assisting factor, factors are compassion and the awakening heart. Without the awakening heart then there’s no way that we can even achieve the first of the five paths of the universal vehicle, the path of accumulation.
So it’s necessary that we cultivate the awakening heart and in turn, in order to develop that compassion? So Śākyamūni Buddha said that method without wisdom is bondage. What he meant by that is that even if we were to have the awakening heart, we still circle within cyclic existence. But method accompanied by wisdom is liberation. That once the wisdom is accompanied with the awakened heart, then it is the achievement of liberation.
And continuing likewise, wisdom without method is bondage that that there is no attainment of omniscience. And but wisdom linked with method is liberation. That is to say that we can attain omniscience. So it’s also said that in order for a great bird to cross over the ocean, it needs two strong wings. That simply having one is not sufficient.
Having one or the other by themselves would not would not be a means to cross the ocean, but having two strong wings, thereby the this great bird can cross any vast distance over the ocean. So we are this bird in our in that we are involved in practicing the path of liberation. And these two wings are the wings of method and wisdom.