Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. A homely story about a Yeti knocking rodents unconscious one by one — only to find them all fled when it looks back — anchors Khensur Rinpoche’s closing instruction in this 52-minute session: don’t lose the eleven constructive mental factors the way that Yeti loses its catch. The commentary completes the list of those eleven factors (faith, shame, embarrassment, non-attachment, non-hatred, non-ignorance, effort, pliancy, conscientiousness, equanimity, non-harmfulness), using a business-inventory analogy to frame Dharma practice as stocking up before trading for profit. Rinpoche then introduces the destructive mental factors (six root, twenty proximate) and takes questions: why non-ignorance is a subtype of wisdom but not its equivalent; what self-shame actually means (respect for excellent qualities, not self-condemnation); and a four-possibilities analysis distinguishing faith from liking, illustrated with the Buddha, a spouse, and true sufferings as contrasting examples. Suited to students with some background in Buddhist mind-science.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 29 AK 1989-02-23.mp3
UUID: 11c0ff9f-a144-469a-83e0-4d47dd92d3b1
Teacher: Khensur Rinpoche
Collection: Awareness and Knowledge 1988-1989 (Khensur Rinpoche)
Date: 1989-02-23
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 52.7 minutes
Words: ~2,592
Develop in a positive direction with whatever types of substances we place within our mind. So, by practice developing these various eleven constructive mental mental factors, then we will experience happiness, will experience bliss, and this will we will progress on and on to higher types of bliss. So these are the eleven mental constructive mental factors which bring about happiness, not only to our mind, but to the person, him or herself. Depending upon whether the mind is happy or the person is happy. Therefore, by introducing these, associating, developing these mental factors within our mind, we will be happy people.
But not only will our mind be happy, but there is a relationship between the mind and body and our body will also be happy. Whereby developing these qualities, eleven constructive mental factors, we will be able to eliminate all the negative aspects, all the faults. And in developing all the excellent qualities, we will eventually not only be happy presently, but finally attain liberation in Buddhahood. So those who are engaging in spiritual practice, you know we have to make it very much our business to investigate these eleven constructive mental factors. Now, what is their nature?
What is their function? What types of result do they bring? How can we understand how they’re operating within our mind? And then thinking this way, make effort in the methods for actually cultivating them, developing them, whether, you know, no matter how much we can, you know, making effort, if we can develop seven of these mental factors, five of these mental factors, two of these mental factors, just one of these mental factors, to that degree we’re going to be happier, that we’re going to approach the auspiciousness of liberation that much quicker. Normally we conceive of the causes for our happiness to be such things as whether we have good food or not, whether we tea, the clothes that we wear, place that we live in our house, our home.
But these are the normally conceived of factors which bring in happiness. But these cannot bring us any type of ultimate happiness. Ultimately, to find happiness, we must depend upon developing these eleven constructive mental factors. So these so these are the these are the factors which give us happiness. Now we’re going to talk about those things which give us suffering.
So now we’re going to discuss the negative mental factors, the destructive mental factors. And there are the six root destructive mental factors and the twenty proximate destructive mental factors. And, you know, just as in a tree has a trunk, and likewise, and growing from the trunk are various branches. The trunk of the destructive actions is made up of six. Destructive mental factors are made up of six, mental factors, and growing out from these, the various branches, there are twenty proximate, or the proximate simply means near or closely associated with.
Twenty, closely associated, destructive mental factors. So, there are six root and twenty proximate destructive mental factors. So there are many things which bring us suffering. They’re both material and non material. You know, with regard to material things.
For example, a knife, cold, hot. These are all the things which causes physical suffering. But here we’re talking about those things, those factors which causes mental suffering. So have you have you written down the eleven constructive mental factors? I haven’t got them all.
So the the first is So in a way practicing Dharma is very much like going into business. First we have to stock up, and then we have to get our inventory. And then once we get our inventory, then we can go into business and we can trade and develop and get a great profit. But without an inventory, there’s no way we’re ever going to get any profit. Come on top, baby.
Cancel pie, oh my goodness. There’s no, you know, if we don’t have an inventory, if we don’t have a stock, there’s no way we can get a profit. Isn’t that right? So we begin our inventory of the eleven constructive mental factors, which are the first one of which is faith. And the second is self shame or just shame.
Self shame. Third is embarrassment. Fourth is nonattachment. This is not, non hatred. If you’re written down, that’s okay.
But if you haven’t, it’d be good if you wrote it down. The sixth is nonignorance or non-delusion. So this is the seventh is where we began today. It was the first one. It was effort.
Eighth was pliancy. Ninth was conscientiousness. Tenth is equanimity. Eleventh is nonharmfulness. So, you know, within the secular and non secular, you know, the spiritual and, say, materialist approach, Within the realm of materialism, we use various items to bring us various things to As a means to bring us happiness.
Use money, various material possessions, and in gathering these together and and manipulating them, we we find some type of material happiness. On the spiritual side, we have a we make make make use of various commodities or other tools. And these various tools are the tools which help us to eliminate the various faults for our mind. And these tools are the various antidotes. So these are the the tools that we’re making use of to find happiness within the the spiritual realm, and these are the things which bring us happiness.
So within the within the practice of Dharma, we’re trying to gather all together. These are the various factors that we’re trying to gather together as a means to to progress along the path, as a means to find happiness, you know, as a means to abandon to obscurations, to develop our mind, and finally, in traveling on all the various paths and grounds, and thereby, ultimately, to attain Buddhahood. What? Common issue. So we’re finished with the, with the category of constructive states of mind, mental factors.
And these are extremely important so perhaps we could spend the rest of the time answering questions if you have any on what we’ve covered. These ones which are presented in the negative, there’s a you know, the they’re they’re that which is what? Being negated is a destructive mental factor. And so, the opposite or the cessation of that destructive mental factor is said to be a positive constructive mental factor. So it’s the opposite of the, it’s the opposite, it’s the cessation or the opposite of one of the destructive factors and therefore these are presented in, using a negation of these destructive factors.
So, for example, there are various ones which were various mental, constructive mental factors which are resented in negative way. Non hatred, non attachment, non ignorance. That we simply are applying, know, are, their opposite factor are destructive. And we say that we’re negating those. The cessation of those, the negation of those is taken as, or the opposite of those is taken as, is given the name of a positive factor.
By constructive mental factor. So you could say that So yeah. So we can say that that non ignorance is a wisdom, is wisdom. Wisdom is not non ignorance. Just the opposite factor of ignorance is wisdom.
So, you know, we talked about generalities and particulars. So wisdom, a non ignorance is a particular of wisdom. That is to say, you know, you have a category of what we call wisdom. And within this there are many, there are many subcategories. And one of these is non ignorance.
For example, there is the wisdom which is associated with hearing, with the hearing consciousness, wisdom associated with the eye consciousness. These are not non ignorances. These are, but they can’t, they are wisdom. Non ignorance is only the opposite of ignorance. It’s not something more than that.
So therefore, non ignorance is a wisdom, but it’s, wisdom is not a non ignorance. It’s a, you know, a, what do we call those? Generalities in particular. Wisdom is a generality. Non ignorance is one of the, one type wisdom.
So wisdom is not constructive mental factor. There’s a there’s an afflicted wisdom. There’s an afflicted afflicted wisdom. For example, the So the various the various wrong views such as a view of the transitory collection is a wisdom, but it’s not But it’s the view of the transitory collection is unspecified or neutral. It’s not it’s neither constructive or destructive.
Anyway. So the view of the transitory collection is afflicted wisdom. Yeah. I got a. So Yeah.
Good to hear. Questions? So if you have some questions, we can we can answer them. Otherwise, we’ll Otherwise, we’ll we’ll go on to the afflictive mental factors. Yeah.
The two shown in the announcement seem to make this slightly negative. So you wanna give me another word for negative there? What do you think? Destructor. So when we talk about the mental factor of self shame, shame, it in no way implies that we are thinking bad of ourselves, that we think I’m no good.
It essentially is not having, having no respect for excellent qualities or those who possess excellent qualities. So, a disrespect or a lack of respect for excellent qualities or those who possess excellent qualities is self shame. Or, it would be the lack of self shame. Having that respect would be having self shame. So if, you know, take another example of If there was a highly regarded Australian figure and there were many excellent qualities and there was something that was very, usually very highly regarded.
And someone were to look at or to meet him and they’d say, Oh, he can’t. He’s he’s really nothing. And that he can’t speak well. He can’t he can’t he can’t really is has no really has no outstanding qualities whatsoever. He’s really nothing.
And this would be what we mean by, non shame. What we mean by non shame? Having no regard for that which is actually has excellent qualities. In the case of some spiritual master who really possess great qualities, high realizations and to just say, oh, he’s a nothing. He’s nobody.
He doesn’t have any qualities whatsoever. And just holding him in disregard with no regard and no respect. This would be a lack of self shame. So, shame. Maybe there’s a better translation for the word.
Still approximate translation. So in in a develop any cultivation or development of faith is necessary to see the excellent quality of the object. For example, we were to seek to develop faith in the Buddha, we would first go to the Dharma. And through studying the Dharma, seeing that its vastness and its profundity, then we would say, the Buddha, he understood that and he taught that. Therefore, he has that he is.
And in this way, come to understand of his excellent qualities, that he was the teacher of the Dharma and developed faith in the Buddha. So seeing the excellent qualities of the object is the way we develop faith. With respect to the Buddha, understanding that his, the nature of the love which he possesses, compassion, his realization of emptiness, that he’s eliminated all the various faults. And coming to understand what these in fact mean and understanding that he in fact possesses these qualities, saying, developing it, wow, that’s fantastic. And this is the development of faith.
So I pleasing. Word toward the Buddha you could develop liking or you find the Buddha very pleasing. Or you could, there are various ways to translate the word. Liking, pleasing, to take joy in. So these are all expressions of faith.
To find the Buddha pleasing to you, to find the liking, attraction, taking joy in. These are all would be all expressions of faith. You have to translate the same word a few different ways. So there for those who have studied a little bit of collective topics, there are four possibilities between faith and Between between and and faith, there are four possibilities. Know, something which is both, something which is neither, something which is a and not b, something which is b and not a.
So if we say as an example of something which is both, we’ll say liking. Both which an object of liking, object of faith. We could, we could name the Buddha, for example. One an example of something which we like, an object of our liking, which is not an object of our faith, would be our spouse, our partner. We would like, we like our partner, we, we probably don’t have faith in our partner.
And then an example of an object which we have faith in, but we don’t like would be the true sufferings and true sources of sufferings. We understand that the Buddha taught that by abandoning these through practice and meditation that we can achieve the path. And finally, cessation or liberations, the happiness that we can have faith that in the truth of these and what was taught, that we have faith in the in the nature of true sufferings and true sources, but we don’t like them. So we have we can have faith in faith in the validity of true sufferings as a factual representation. But true sufferings are something which are to be eliminated or destroyed.
We don’t like them. So something which is which is neither an object of faith or an object or an object of. Okay. So I presented this in a slightly wrong way. Shouldn’t be it has a problem with it shouldn’t be the object of faith or object of liking.
Or it should be the state, the actual states of mind, faith and liking. Right? So the flower is something which is neither faith nor liking. So what we’re talking about so we’re talking about not the objects, but the actual states of mind. And with respect to true sufferings, you know, with the mind which thinks, oh, that’s, you know, that true suffering is, it’s, it should be abandoned.
This is faith. Thinking that, you know, true suffering, it’s their it’s valid teaching that it should be abandoned, this faith. So it’s this actual mind which is thinking that, not just taking that as the object of that mind, but the actual mind which thinks that is faith. So rather than I translate it as the object of faith and object of liking, it’s the it’s this development of mind which think these these thoughts that this should be abandoned. So, I mean Buddha is the object of faith.
He’s not faith. So we would in order to in this example he would the mind which thinks of well it has excellent all thinking of all these great qualities that the Buddha is very precious. This thinking mind that that those thoughts are faith. So don’t forget the eleven constructive mental factors. We we told this story about what was he killing?
Or is that that the the the Yeti which kills, what is it, rats? Rodents. Rodents. Hets them on the head and places them under it and then goes to get another one. And meanwhile the rodent regains consciousness and runs off.
So by the time he’s going through the process of hitting his over the head and putting him under him and he looks down, they’re all gone. So we said likewise, we should try not to forget all these eleven constructive mental factors.