Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Three stories about dissimulation anchor the opening of this 42-minute session: Indra’s self-important silence when Buddha turned a cosmological question back on him, Kalu Rinpoche’s endless flattery in place of an answer, and a great Geshe’s uncontrollable coughing fit. Khensur Rinpoche is working through the secondary afflictions — miserliness, deceit, and dissimulation come first — before arriving at the real subject: ignorance. He offers two contrasting definitions, one from the lower philosophical schools and one from the Madhyamaka, then traces Dharmakīrti’s famous chain: from self-grasping arises “I,” from “I” arise “mine” and “other,” and from these arise anger, attachment, and pride. The session closes with encouragement rooted in Buddha nature — every being carries the seed of full awakening and, with Milarepa’s courage, can cultivate it.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 34 AK 1989-03-09.mp3
UUID: 9c9f259a-eb63-48d5-b908-fd6a181bd562
Teacher: Khensur Rinpoche
Collection: Awareness and Knowledge 1988-1989 (Khensur Rinpoche)
Date: 1989-03-09
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 42.0 minutes
Words: ~1,683
So the previous factor, jealousy is motivated by attachment. And then the sixth afflicted mental factor, the secondary mental factor is miserliness. Miserliness. And this is motivated by by desire. And this is the inability to give away one’s own possessions, food, clothing, money, and and and holding tightly to it.
The inability to give away one’s own, articles such as food, clothing, money, and instead of holding tightly to them. Holding them too tightly to you is miserliness. So then the seventh is deceit. The seventh is deceit. Deceit is motivated by desire.
So in order to get the possessions, articles of others, to pretend to to pretend one has certain great qualities, where in fact one does not. In order to get the goods, services, possessions of others, to pretend that one has certain qualities to put on airs, as if one has these qualities when in fact one does not. You know, you might pretend that you’re a liberated being, that you’re very peaceful, actually you’re very agitated, you’re you know, it’s putting on a show in order to get something from others. This is the quality of deceit. Okay.
So the eighth is dissimulation. Dissimulation. Dissimulation. Dissimulation. So this is motivated by either attachment or ignorance.
The the The conception that one that one has, you know, has excellent qualities. The conception that one has excellent qualities to the extent where it’s not necessary to listen to others who might, wish to point out your faults. This acts as an obstruction to actually correcting your faults. So what would we say? The conception of yourself as having such excellent qualities that it acts as an obstruction to listening to others who may be trying to point out certain faults to you.
This would be dissimulation. So the Buddha asked Indra, Where did the earth where did earth come from? And Indra answered, the earth came from water. Where did water come from? Water came from air.
Where did air come from? Air came from space. Where did space come from? Space is infinite. So the first in the first one, I had the two turned around.
It was Indira who asked Buddha, where did the earth come from? And he he went through this. The earth came from water and the water came from air and the air came from space and the space is infinite. And then the the Buddha turned the question around and said, You tell me. Where did the earth come from?
And Indra said, I am the great I am the great Indra. I know everything. Therefore, I will not say anything. And this was this is a example of dissimulation. Once a student asked Kalu Rinpoche, what is subtle selflessness of persons?
And Kalu Rinpoche answered over and over again, Oh, what a good student you are. You know, you’re a very good student. You’re an excellent student. And he kept saying this over and over again. He never answered the question.
There was a time when a gathering of the great teachers and there was a great Geshe there and they were asked putting questions to the teachers. They put a question to this great Geshe and there’s a very famous line which says the net of conceptions. This is from a famous quotation which begins with the net of conceptions. And he asked this great Geshe, what does conceptions here refer to? And the Geshe just started coughing and he couldn’t stop coughing.
So do you have any questions? If remember if you can’t answer the question, he’ll just start coughing. So if you have some questions. Ignorance. So according to the to the lower tenets, that is Great Exposition School, all the tenets beneath Prāsaṇgika Madhyamaka school.
The Great Exposition School, Sūtra School, Mind Only School, and Autonomy Middle Way School. Ignorance is defined as the mental factor which obscures the engaging in the The mental factor which the mental factor which engages its object in an in an in an obscured manner the mental factor which engages its object in an obscured manner is the definition of ignorance. So in the in the Consequentialist Middle Way School, the definition of ignorance is that that which is the reverse of the literally knowledge exalted wisdom. That which is the the reverse or the opposite of knowledge exalted wisdom is ignorance. And what it means when it says knowledge exalted wisdom, this is a path.
This is the exalted wisdom realizing emptiness or selflessness. And so the opposite of that is is the definition of is is ignorance. The teacher didn’t cough. So of these six, of course, one of the six is ignorance itself. So the other five arise in in in a dependence upon that the sixth that is ignorance.
Yeah. But yeah. So the the other five root afflictions arise in dependence upon the sixth ignorance. So, Dharmakīrti has a famous quotation where he says that ignorance which is a conception of self, in dependence upon ignorance arises I. In dependence upon I arises other.
In dependence upon I and other arises in observing other, one generates anger. In observing oneself, one generates attachment. And in between, one generates pride. So we can understand this easily. We always have constantly this thought of I, I, I arise in our mind.
In dependence upon I arises mine. And we think of my friends, my wife, my house, my money, my clothing. Once we have mine, then we have others. Others who are not mine And dependence upon so, conceiving in dependence upon I arises others. In dependence upon I arises mine.
Toward others, we generate anger. Toward mind, we generate attachment. So they’re all based on I. Yes. And and then further in dependence upon ignorance, we conceive of wrong views as being correct views and engage in all the various unskillful actions under their influence.
And then additionally, in dependence upon ignorance arises the twenty secondary afflictions. This is our main enemy, our real enemy, ignorance. This is the one this is the thing that we are to eliminate. If the by eliminating this, then we can attain liberation. So we have to be, you know, very great hearers.
We have to be very brave in fighting and finally bringing to an end ignorance just like Milarepa did. He was a great he was a very he was a brave brave hero. And through through through his struggle with ignorance, he attained Buddhahood. Over through struggling and overcoming ignorance, he attained Buddhahood. So the enemy is So the enemy is not outside of ourselves.
It’s inside of ourselves. So, you know, when we when we use the word enemy, we we talk we refer to something which gives us suffering. And actually that that which brings about all our suffering, which is giving all give us all our suffering is, afflictive emotions and karma. And between these two afflictive emotions and karma, the root is afflictive emotions and the root of all afflictive emotions is ignorance. Therefore, ignorance is our enemy.
So, you know, these days in Tibet, the Tibetan people have no freedom either physical or mental. In Australia, they have physical freedom but no mental freedom. So this is the way it is with most of beings in the world that they are not in control of their own minds. As soon as the afflictive emotions arise, the affection is taking control of their minds. So this is the circumstances which we all find ourselves in.
All the sentient beings in the world, they are all in the same position. That they have no freedom within their own minds. The moment the afflictions arise, then the afflictions take control of them. And through their control of the afflictive emotions creating karma, which simply perpetuates cyclic existence and everyone’s exactly in the same position. So there is a time when all sentient beings will attain Buddhahood.
So all sentient beings will attain Buddhahood. This is because all sentient beings have Buddha nature or Buddha Buddha lineage. And it’s as if it’s a the seed of Buddha is in every sentient being. It’s just like the seed of a of a sprout. It depends upon the seed, we can grow a sprout, but we have to activate and cultivate that seed.
Likewise, if we activate and cultivate the seed of our Buddha nature, we will progress in such a way that the afflictive emotions will begin to decrease more and more until finally, they are completely eliminated and we achieve Buddhahood. So we have to have courage in that we can’t go around saying, well, I can’t do this or I don’t know anything or I don’t I I’m not, I’m not able to do that. That, in fact, that you have Buddha nature. And that if you make effort, then you can cultivate this Buddha nature that you can do with effort, then you can accomplish whatever you put yourself to doing. So we have to have enthusiasm, we have to develop courage, We have to, you know, try to develop as as frequently as possible constructive states of mind to practice, to cultivate our mind, and this in this way we will definitely improve.
So the situation is such that all the people of the world are going through great deals of difficulty that they put they go through a lot of experience of lots of satisfaction and suffering. But for most people, this is purposeless, it’s meaningless. They go through difficulties and experience suffering and it’s of no value to themselves or to others. But those who appreciate the fact that they have a precious human rebirth and seek to practice the Dharma, though in fact they do experience difficulties, dissatisfactions, but there’s a great meaning and purpose to what they’re doing. Ultimately, in the future, that they will bring about their own welfare and the purpose of others will also be fulfilled, that their difficulties will finally come to an end.
Yes.