Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Using the Heart Sūtra mantra “gate gate paragate parasamgate bodhi” as a map of the five Buddhist paths, Khensur Rinpoche opens this 45-minute first session with a precise orientation: exactly where close placements of mindfulness falls on the overall path. He unpacks a foundational verse — avoid negativity, accumulate virtue, tame the mind — explaining the three-part structure of skillful action (motivation, activity, dedication) and likening Dharma books to recipe books that list the right ingredients in the right proportions. He then situates close placements among seven categories of practice used to abandon saṃsāra, before defining mindfulness itself: a mental factor everyone already possesses, characterized by familiarity with its object, holding the mind to it, and preventing distraction. The session closes by naming the four objects of observation: body, feelings, mind, and phenomena.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 01 CP of M 1997 06 07.mp3
UUID: c1187a50-c521-408e-81cc-2ed148a3b923
Teacher: Khensur Rinpoche
Collection: Close Placements of Mindfulness (Khensur Rinpoche)
Date: 1997-06-07
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 45.1 minutes
Words: ~2,671
So we’ll begin by spending a few minutes adjusting our motivation, developing as our motivation the awakened heart. Just as we ourselves want to be happy and do not wish to suffer, likewise, all sentient beings equal to space wish to be happy and wish not to suffer. Now we have achieved a human life in which we have a balance of both happiness and suffering. And in this context, we are able to discriminate the causes of happiness and suffering and have the ability to abandon the causes of suffering to cultivate the causes of happiness. So other sentient beings are as limitless as space.
They are numberless. And though they wish happiness, though they wish not to suffer, they have obstructions with regard to recognizing what are the causes of happiness and what are the causes of suffering. Not being able to discriminate these causes. They, wanting happiness, are bereft of happiness. They’re not wanting to suffer, experience continual suffering.
And moreover, these suffering sentient beings have all benefited ourselves. They have benefited us in the past, are benefiting us in the present, and will benefit us again in the future. So developing the attitude which is unable to bear their continual suffering and developing first the quality of compassion expressed in the thought, may all sentient beings be free of suffering and the causes of suffering. And then going on to develop love which expressed in the thought, may all sentient beings have happiness and the causes of happiness. In light of all of this, developing the attitude of mind which wishes to free all sentient beings of their suffering, wishes to lead them to complete happiness.
In order to achieve this end, I must first remove all of my various faults and bring to consummation all of my excellent qualities. The mind that aspires to achieve this is the awakened heart. So in order to achieve this end, I’m going to practice the essence of the universal vehicle and I’m going to listen to these teachings which describe what is to be adopted and what is to be rejected. Having listened, I will reflect well upon them. Having reflected, I will put them in practice through my meditation and bring them to fulfillment to be a vast benefit to all sentient beings.
So beginning with the preliminary prayers, first of which is, verse number three. And then on page eighteen, the Heart of Wisdom Sūtra. Thus I have heard, They are unborn and unceasing. They are neither inferior nor free from impurity. They neither decrease nor increase.
Therefore, Śāriputra, in emptiness, there is no form, feeling, no recognition, no volition, no consciousness, no eye, no ear, no nose, no tongue, no body, no mind. There are no spheres of the mind. There are none of these the way of the sphere of mental consciousness. The There are none of these, all the way up to there is no old age and death, nor is there any cessation of old age and death.
Thus, there is no suffering, no cause of suffering, no cessation of suffering, and no path. There is no wisdom, no attainment, and no non attainment. Therefore, Śāriputra, because there is no attainment, all bodhisattvas hold to the wisdom gone beyond. And because there is no obscurity in mind, they have no fear, Passing utterly beyond falsity, they reach beyond the bounds of sorrow. All the Buddhas who dwell in the three times rely on the wisdom gone beyond, fully, freely awakened through unsurpassed, most perfect and complete enlightenment.
Therefore, the mantra of the wisdom gone beyond, the mantra of great insight, the unequal and unsurpassed mantra, the mantra that calms all suffering should be known as the truth for there is no deception. The mantra of the wisdom gone beyond is proclaimed. Oh, Śāriputra, this is how a bodhisattva mahasattva should learn the profound wisdom gone beyond. And the blessed one arose from that concentration and praised the bodhisattva mahasattva saying, very good, very good, oh son of good family. Like that.
The profound wisdom gone beyond should be practiced exactly as you have said. And then the Tathagathas will rejoice. When the blessed one has said this, the venerable Śāriputra, the noble Avalokiteśvara, that whole gathering in the world with its gods, men, demigods, and spirits, their hearts full of joy, praise the words of the blessed one. So ends the noble discourse on the essence of the wisdom gone beyond. And then the offering of the short mandala.
Verse number five. So beginning with a verse from the Buddha who spoke compassionately saying that we are not to involve ourselves in any negativities, that we are to amass a great deal of creative potential, and that we are to control our minds. This is the teaching. So the first of this verse, first line of this verse was not to involve ourselves in negativities. And what do we mean by negativities?
These are all the various unskillful actions of the three doors, those doors of body, speech, and mind. And what to say of great unskillful actions, we should try to refrain from even minor unskillful actions. So, what is the reason that we are to refrain from involving ourselves in negative actions? Why is that the case? It’s simply because we do not want to suffer.
And therefore, not wanting to suffer, it’s necessary that we refrain from even minor unskillful actions. Why? Because it is from unskillful actions that undesired that the undesired suffering is experienced. If we can if we can cease to involve ourselves completely in negative actions, then we will have removed the cause of suffering and therefore will not experience suffering. Then the second line of this verse, it it mentions that we are to amass a vast accumulation of creative potential or virtue.
And this virtue is accumulated just as was mentioned in terms of negativities that this is done through the three doors of body, speech, mind. And that we we are to accumulate mass in a in a very perfect in a completely perfect fashion. And what does that mean? That in order to assure that our creative potential that we’re seeking to accumulate is of a complete and perfect in its nature, it’s necessary that we concern ourselves with three parts of an activity. The first is the preparatory part of the activity.
That is to say our motivation. Why are we doing what we’re doing? Most perfectly, it is to be the motivation which is behind our actions is the motivation of the awakened heart. Then there’s the actual activity itself. In order to assure that it’s skillful in nature, we must not allow the mind to be distracted in the course of pursuing the activity that we should place our mind single pointedly in terms of the conduct of the actual activity itself.
And then finally, it should be perfectly concluded with dedication. So, how are we to dedicate in this perfect manner That having developed a positive motivation, we go on to accumulate a skillful skillful actions. We accumulate creative potential and we we direct that creative potential towards various ends. We should not direct it toward the ends of this life itself, the happiness of only this life, but try to raise the level of our motivation that it can be directed toward the attainment of, for example, the status of a human or a celestial being of a future life, but we can do better than that. It could be directed toward the the end of achieving liberation, but we can do better than that.
What the best type of dedication is the dedication that whatever creative potential we may have accumulated that may it may it may by its means, I achieve Buddhahood for the sake of all sentient beings. So this is the reason that the reason that we have to involve ourselves in skillful actions that we have to practice, accumulating creative potential is simply because we want, that we want happiness. Happiness is the cause of happiness is skillful actions. And wanting happiness, we have to involve ourselves in skillful actions. So it is by means of these careful actions that we achieve the two attainments, both temporal and ultimate, that we attain the temporal attainment of high status and we achieve the ultimate attainments of liberation and omniscience.
So it’s said that, know, what does it come down to in terms of of whether the quality of our activity, the quality of our action? It come down it comes down mainly to the mind itself. The mind is determined of the quality of the action. So therefore, since the quality of the activity is dependent upon the mind motivating the activity, we must develop we must adjust our motivation. And what there are unsuitable minds, it is unsuitable that as a motivation our mind be mixed with the afflictive emotions.
We should try to disentangle our mind with our present motivation if it’s associated with any of the afflictive emotions. But on the contrary, try to integrate our present minds in terms of our motivation with the qualities of love and compassion and the awakened heart. Therefore, try to generate these states as a motivation. And this verse went on to say that we are to control our minds or we are to tame our minds. This is the teaching of the Buddha.
Buddha in Tibetan is Sangye, in Sanskrit it is Buddha. And what are the teachings of the Buddha? The teachings are for example, can be exemplified by the books which set out the teachings. And the the subject matter of these teachings is essentially what is to be adopted and what is to be rejected. And in terms of implementing this, we involve ourselves in the three higher trainings, the the higher training in ethics, concentration, and wisdom.
These are the teachings of the Buddha. So it is the the teachings are represented in are communicated through books and the subject matter essentially which is presented in the books are what is to be adopted adopted and what is to be rejected. That they say, what are we to do and what are we not to do? What is beneficial and what is faulty? So this is the quintessence of of the teachings setting out in terms of of the setting out in terms of of what is to be adopted and rejected?
So a way, the Dharma books are very much like a recipe book. Know, if we’re if we’re preparing a a meal and we want to we we look into we look at a recipe book and it tells us the various ingredients and how to combine them properly to get to to be able to cook a delicious meal. We might, you know, what types of vegetables, what if you want to put chili, various spices in it. And so it tells us the very the various proportions and how to go about mixing them together properly and you end up with a delicious meal. Likewise, the Dharma books tell us how to go about creating a perfect practice, the various ingredients of a perfect practice and how to combine them to achieve the ends that we wish.
So just as in the case of following a recipe book and cooking a delicious meal, likewise, we follow the teachings set out in various books in order to achieve the ends of liberation and omniscience. This is this is we wish to create a delicious meal in order to find happiness. Likewise, we want to achieve liberation and omniscience to find happiness. So we’re going to begin the teaching on the close placements of mindfulness. So the teachings of the universal vehicle, the teachings of Buddhism can be divided into seven classes or seven topics.
The first of which is the close placement of mindfulness. Then there are the perfect abandonments. Then there are the limbs of miraculous activities. The four powers, the four forces, the seven limbs of enlightenment, and finally, the eight full noble path. So these seven are the main methods whereby to achieve made use of by the individual vehicle or the to achieve liberation, to abandon cyclic existence.
So these seven categories or topics of teachings are the main means which are employed by the individual vehicle to abandon cyclic existence and to achieve So in practicing, putting these teachings in the practice, we travel. In putting these teachings into practice, we follow a path and the path has five levels or we can say that there are five paths or five levels to the path, the overall path. And this is expressed in the the mantra that we just recited when we recited the Heart of Wisdom Sūtra where it said So this sets up the five paths. The first Gati is the first path. The second Gati is the second path.
Pāragate is the third. Pārasamgate, the fourth. And Bodhi, the fifth. So what if these hold true both for the individual vehicle and the universal vehicle. If we were to say, well, what are the names of those paths?
Then the first Gati is the path of accumulation. The second path is the path of preparation. The third path is the path of of seeing. This is where we have the direct insight into the truth. So this is the path where we see the truth for the first time.
Then the fourth path path is the path of meditation. This is where we accustom ourselves to that truth. And then the fifth path is the path of Bodhi or awakening or enlightenment. This is where we have brought to that that customization to consummation. This present teaching, the close placements of mindfulness is practiced at the path of accumulation.
And there are three levels to the path of accumulation. There’s small, middling, and great. And this is this this would be practiced at the level of the small practice at the small level of the path of accumulation. So does everyone have a copy of the translation? Three.
Two to three. There’s two people that don’t. Okay. So the overall presentation, has has eight parts as it’s mentioned in this translation. The the objects of observation, the manners of meditation, reasons for meditating, entity, boundaries, divisions, etymology, and demonstrating that the close placements of mindfulness of the universal vehicle is superior.
So first, with respect to in talking about the close placements of a mindfulness, what is mindfulness? First, we should understand it’s not something that you have to attain a path in order to develop or have. We all have mindfulness. It is a mental factor that we all possess. And it has three features or qualities.
The first of these is that it has as its object of observation a previously a thing which we have been previously familiar with. So it takes as its object of observation a thing which we have previous familiarity with. Then it functions to hold the mind to that object and not to And that’s the second quality, to hold the mind to that object. And thirdly, to not allow the mind to be distracted to other objects. So it’s the aspect of taking as its object of observation a thing which we are previously familiar with.
It and it functions in two ways. It does not allow us to forget the object and by by through holding onto the object and not allowing to be distracted to other objects. So the in terms of the first division of the text is objects of observation. So as we said, the object of observation is an object a thing which we have previous familiarity with. And in terms of the close placements of mindfulness, there are four such objects and these are bodies, feelings, minds, and phenomena.