Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Khensur Rinpoche opens this 47-minute commentary with a striking test case: if you are unjustly beaten and jailed, can you feel joy rather than anger? He uses this scenario to examine whether tonglen — taking others’ suffering and giving them your happiness — has become genuine or remains theoretical. Moving through verse seven, he explains how to dedicate all virtue to sentient beings while absorbing their suffering through breathing meditation (exhale gives happiness, inhale takes suffering), and addresses the worry that this practice costs you something. Verse eight then covers the eight worldly concerns — comfort, discomfort, praise, blame, reputation, and pleasant or unpleasant words — that contaminate any practice, closing with the view that phenomena are like a magician’s illusory horse: appearing real but existing only by imputation.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 06 8VTT 1999 06 14.mp3
UUID: 7a070ba7-a3fc-4664-8e1e-df2b08bbe859
Teacher: Khensur Rinpoche
Collection: 8 Verses Thought Transformation (Khensur Rinpoche)
Date: 1999-06-14
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 47.5 minutes
Words: ~2,592
So it’s like so you you go there and badly hurt, beaten and put put you in jail. So if you are not practitioner, then what what you what you feel is you just feel angry and then that’s all you can do and you would just be put in prison so you can do nothing except getting angry or being feel sad. If you are the practitioner who always cultivate love, compassion and bodhicitta and practice of taking giving, taking others suffering and giving your happiness to others, and so if that happened to you then what you should think is that that time is the right time to examine examine your practice. See whether my practice of those love, compassion, bodhicitta and all those practices of giving and taking and see that you should examine at that time whether my practice has become very effective or helpful or not. That is the right time to examine your practice.
So at that time it’s the right time to examine your practice. While examining your practice and if you find yourself very happy and then happy and rejoicing then that means that your practice of taking and giving and all this compassion, love and so forth becomes very, very effective and become and has also reached to the point or yeah get to its point. And not only that, so when you came to know you should feel again rejoice and then again pray that all the sufferings, there are many other beings like myself undergoing facing these problems and should all those sufferings be right upon me and and offer it or dedicate all your merits to others. Feel very feel rejoice and delighted that that my my practice of Tonglen or giving and taking is it’s real and not artificial. And one should as one is badly hurt or beaten, and should also think and undergo through suffering and should not get upset or depressed and think that they feel rejoice and then take that suffering voluntarily by thinking that these are the result of my karma or action I created in the past.
And I had cultivated the causes and I should have to take all those results or And the result of the karma should ripen on me and I’m the only one who’s responsible for that by thinking that I may feel rejoice and take the self and voluntarily. And then also take the others suffering upon you. Yeah, Will happily take others suffering upon you. Say you went to that friend’s place and then he just got get angry by seeing you and pretend not to know you and hurt you badly and due to that he has accumulated lots of negative actions and faced problems and suffering to him and will suffer due to that negative action and feel very to develop a compassion towards him thinking that I’m the one who I mean, I provoked him to get let him get angry and it was my fault. And by feel very compassionate Compassion towards him and take and pray that all his his sufferings be brought from oneself or to his mind.
Now. And meditate on compassion thinking that he didn’t hurt me, I hurt him. But thinking this, definitely have compassion. And also here the great master, Śāntideva, in his engaging in the bodhisattva stated, said that a person say that all this person who caused me suffering, who gave me food and who harmed me, all those be should not, one should not distinguish between those who bring help and one who brings suffering should not distinguish and then pray for all those people, may they be the fortunate to generate the bodhicitta and attain enlightenment. So we should make prayers for all.
And and I said that one should see that person as a spiritual teacher or yes, spiritual teacher because spiritual teacher is the one who is very kind, grateful to you by teaching you the path and meditation and through this you collect the great merit and which becomes the conducive conditions through the attainment of enlightenment. So those persons are see that person as a spiritual teacher because of their harm, because of the person harms you, you’ve been able to, you develop patience, love, compassion and so forth and through this practice you purify lots of negativities and accumulate merit. So because of that you should see this being same as spiritual teacher. So you just have other person and then the person returns you the anger and so forth. Answer for that, what you need to do, what you give answer for that is cultivate compassion and patience.
So here comes the answer for the venerable Margaret’s question. He asked yesterday’s question. You feed someone invite someone in your room and offer him so forth, and then that person just masks your room. So for that, cultivate compassion and patience. Should not fight that person.
So here, Geshe Shawopa was called from Geshe Shawopa was saying his song, text called Geshe Shawopa’s song saying that whether the person is your enemy or one who you really like or whatever, if that person is the object to cultivate the disturbing emotion or yeah, that person see any of those persons as a spiritual teacher and if you’ve been able to do this thing, do this thing that see, if you are able to see those person as a spiritual teacher then your mind will remain very peace and happy all the time and whatever action you do will become, will bring you happiness and the place or country where you travel, where you stay, the country or place itself becomes the place of happiness or the source of happiness. Now to get to the seventh. So the verse number seven said, in short or it’s saying briefly speaking, summarize the meaning of all the teachings, verses, saying that briefly speaking what one needs to do is cultivate, say any good qualities one has. Either I say the happiness and virtue things, you should always you should dedicate or offer all those all your good qualities towards the sentient beings who are very kind and grateful to you.
And so that we should take without any discrimination on sentient beings whether one is one being harms you or helps you, should happily take all the unwanted sufferings of the sentient beings like they’ve been born of their forms, physical, a person from being from the hell realm to the peak of the cyclic existence. There are numbers of different creatures or beings and then said each one has undergoing through their own, suffering of their own physical forms and so forth. And suffering like suffering of poverty and suffering comes from the disturbing emotions which is the cause of suffering, which is the cause of all sufferings, and then suffering of having the obscurations of the obscuration towards omniscience. So should happily take all the sufferings of those motherly sentient beings to it upon or towards oneself. So once you take all the should offer all the happiness and good qualities one’s good quality and happiness to its two sentient beings and take up all their sufferings upon oneself.
And about taking the suffering, about this practice of giving and taking, there are some sufferings you can take it physically directly and some sufferings you can’t. So if the suffering which you can take directly upon yourself you can take it, and if you can’t take suffering directly then you should take those suffering indirectly through the practice of breathing that when one exhale imagine that all the good qualities and all one’s good qualities and happiness being expelled and given to those sentient beings and during the process of inhale, inhaling, Imagine that you are all the sufferings of beings have been being taken upon. You. I have to mean that, And the great master Nāgārjuna has said the training of cultivating the bodhicitta through the practice of equalizing self and others. Equalizing and changing self and others.
Sorry. And said that may all the sufferings of sentient beings be ripen upon me and then and all all my happiness and good qualities been given or be I mean, have may and then let them have all my happiness and good qualities. And so we should practice this practice of taking giving taking out the suffering and giving one’s happiness to beings, sentient beings. And to do this practice one should know the reason why one has to do this. And as for this the is clearly set.
The great master Śāntideva clearly said that one should equalize and change self and others because if one does not then one will not attain enlightenment. And it’s results for this if you don’t so without that practice if you don’t equalize and change oneself into others then one will not attain enlightenment and due to that one will always be in saṃsāra and also suffer and undergoes through suffering. I’m talking about in the garden, the one down the Texas, I really asked you this. And he asked the question, do you can you live in saṃsāra forever and suffer? No, no.
What today is But one may think that when we do this practice of giving and taking, one may think that one will have great loss because giving all this happiness to others and taking all the suffering all the time means one may think that there is a great loss in doing this practice now. The fact is there’s no to you or there’s no loss because you are taking this practice of this giving and taking this kindly or wholeheartedly with due respect respect and done in one’s thought. So through the thought of all thought, yeah, through one’s thought, just offering all the happiness and taking all the suffering, but the fact is you are not really suffering. One may also think by thinking that by doing this practice in one’s thought of taking all the suffering and giving the happiness but one is not really suffering, not really taking and think that there is no purpose or no effect in doing this practice. But fact is there is a huge benefit in doing this practice when accumulating great merit because through kind heart, through kind heartedness one takes, one receives or one takes all the sufferings of others and with love and compassion, through love and compassion one sends or one give all the happiness to offer happiness to the sentient beings.
So through this process of generating all this love and compassion and remembering the kindness, yes, through this one accumulates the huge amount of merit. And then by accumulating great merit which is very helpful for one to give a result of happiness and eliminate the non virtues. Yeah, not the last one, number eight. So now here the verse number eight says that the so all the practices or teachings above teachings, one should, all the teachings, their teaching has been classified into two, the teachings through the mana and or or character and then through the view. So training in the view.
So he says that all the practices meant all about practices should not be done should be done without stain of the worldly conceptions. Means the way they are, means shouldn’t be done with the eight worldly concepts. Means the eight worldly concepts are like, dislike and praised. Means saying like and dislike. So I’ll just go through the names.
So like, dislike and frame, good reputation and they’ve been praised happy and unhappy and what was missing there? So mainly practice are classified in the six practices with the practices of six perfections. And the main practice, mean through the bodhicitta, one practice engaging in the main practice are the six perfections. And among the six perfection, the first three, the practice of generosity or giving, ethical discipline and patience, these three are the practices of the manners and yeah manners. And then the fourth one the fourth perfection which is of the effort.
And the fourth one is the both include the practices of both the view and the manners. And then the last two are practice of concentration and the wisdom are the practices of the view. So it says that when you do any practice of those perfections and one should be sure that one should do this practice without the saying of worldly conceptions or worldly concerns. One should not have any stain of worldly conceptions or worldly concerns. Here the worldly concerns are like saying feeling happy if you receive any presents and feeling unhappy if you’re not.
One, two. And the second one is being, is called the like and dislikes, which are like, one is And, yeah. And so feeling like like induced like which means being comfortable and uncomfortable. If one feel very comfortable then it’s like That’s right. I mean comfortable and uncomfortable.
And the third one is saying like if one feeling cliche or liking the frame, which means if one praised you, you feel very pride or it’s not about saying the it sets the frame or good reputation and if complains you which and then you feel miscomfortable or something like that. And the last one, So the sixth and seventh is like saying good things or bad things. Say feeling happy or if someone said good things. And and the slight more or less similar, similar, the last four. So saying some good things and you feel very happy, and if they say bad words, you feel uncomfortable or unhappiness.
And last two here is saying the praise or not praise. So they are more or less similar. These are the eight wordly conceptions or concerns. Yeah, but saying that feeling comfortable or unhappy or feeling unhappy when someone say nasty things. So these are according to the concern of worldly things, concern of this life, it’s not taking about future lives.
Yeah. So so one one’s practice should not have any stain of those worldly concerns. And if one practice does have, has a stain of those worldly concerns then the practice didn’t not become a pure practice and it also is not or didn’t become a practice of bodhisattva. So and then second two of the last verses we just and by understanding what phenomena is like illusion being released from the bondage of attachment. And it’s also the last two ones, concentration and perfection, these are the practices of the view.
Saying that in normal days we see lots of things and always consume or take the same means don’t understand that things we don’t see that things are accessed by imputation from our side, but instead of that we always take, we feel real that things they do exist on their own side or exist inherently. So that we think the things that exist the way they appear to us but it is not. The fact is it’s like illusion, say it’s like the magicians which cast a spell on a stone and then produce a horse out of the stone. And the viewer they look at the horse and think it’s a real horse and agrees with the way it appears and then attach or grasp that horse as a horse, which in fact it is not. So likewise when things appear to us and we appear